COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



sheep to microscopic germ-cells, and the wool 

 and the grass to certain nitrogenous and hydro- 

 carbon compounds, preexisting in the atmo- 

 sphere and soil. Obviously, therefore, it is the 

 business of philosophy, extending and general- 

 izing the same kind of information, to describe 

 the universal features of the process by which 

 cognizable objects acquire and lose the sensible 

 forms under which we know them. 



By pointing out the two most obvious fea- 

 tures of this process, we shall render still more 

 intelligible the character of the problem which 

 a synthetic philosophy must attempt to solve. 

 The foregoing illustrations show us that a com- 

 plete account of anything " must include its 

 appearance out of the imperceptible, and its 

 disappearance into the imperceptible." Now 

 a change of state by virtue of which any object 

 ceases to be imperceptible and becomes percep- 

 tible must be a change from a state of diffusion 

 to a state of aggregation, — and the converse 

 change, from aggregation to diffusion, must be 

 the change by virtue of which the object again 

 becomes imperceptible. If, for example, we 

 study a cloud, we find that a complete history of 

 it is contained in the explanation of its concen- 

 tration from millions of particles of aqueous 

 vapour, and its subsequent dissipation into a 

 host of such particles. In like manner, if we 

 study an organism, we find that from germi- 

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