COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



action and the resulting feelings of happiness or 

 misery that he can usually decide upon any line 

 of conduct with a clear perception of its con- 

 sequences, is what we call a prudent man, or a 

 man of sound judgment. While, as Mr. Mill 

 has somewhere observed, that man is most 

 completely educated who has the clearest sense 

 of the connotations of the words which he uses; 

 who understands most thoroughly and feels 

 most keenly the fine shades of distinction be- 

 tween allied groups of conceptions, which less 

 perfectly educated persons are liable to confuse 

 together and to reason about as if they consti- 

 tuted but a single group. Such a man possesses 

 what Sainte-Beuve calls the sense of nuance ; an 

 intellectual characteristic which is perhaps no- 

 where more habitually exemplified than in the 

 charming pages of that most consummate of 

 critics. 



And this leads me to observe — what indeed 

 the whole of the above survey implies — that 

 since knowledge is classification, the complete- 

 ness of the classification varies with the degree 

 of intelligence. Minds in a low stage of devel- 

 opment can distinguish only between widely 

 contrasted phenomena. The classifications of 

 which they are capable consist of but few 

 groups, indefinite in their extent and incoherent 

 in their materials ; while the progressive increase 

 of intelligence consists in the progressive estab- 

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