COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



•' And knows not if it be thunder, or a sound 

 Of rocks thrown down, or one deep cry 

 Of great wild beasts," — 



will adopt a course of action more or less in 

 conformity with environing relations, according 

 to the degree of his sagacity and the extent of 

 his experience. Streaks of light and strata of 

 cloud in the horizon will lead the practised 

 mariner and the unskilled passenger to dif- 

 ferent conclusions. A cartoon of Raphael or; 

 a symphony of Beethoven will excite different 

 emotions in an artist and in a person of feeble 

 impressibility. And from the swinging of a 

 cathedral lamp the young Galileo drew infer- 

 ences which had escaped the attention or baffled- 

 the penetration of thousands of less acute be- 

 holders. Thus, with civilized man, the modes 

 of response to outer relations are almost infi-^ 

 nitely numerous and heterogeneous. 



But now, in this briefly indicated contrast! 

 between the lowest and highest extremes of life, 

 regarded as a correspondence between the or- 

 ganism and the environment, we have passed 

 abruptly from vital relations which are purelyj 

 physical to vital relations which are almost 

 purely psychical. The relations contemplated 

 have been, in each of the instances, relations 

 internally set up in adjustment to external rela- 

 tions. But while the relations set up within the^ 

 tree are simply physico-chemical ; and while thci 

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