COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



plied in the recognition of relations that are 

 more and more special, as well as by the inte- 

 gration implied in the grouping of relations in 

 classes that are more and more general. 



Along with the increase of the correspondence 

 in spatial and temporal remoteness, in speciality 

 and in generaHty, there is a continuous increase 

 in complexity. Indeed, in the various aspects 

 of psychical progress already contemplated, this 

 aspect has been continually illustrated. Obvi- 

 ously the development of sense-organs, while 

 widening the environment and increasing the 

 number of relations to which the organism may 

 adjust itself, enhances also the complexity of 

 the adjustments. Contrast the simple move- 

 ments of the planaria when an opaque object 

 passes before its rudimentary eye, with the com- 

 plex movements of a cat when a mouse is heard 

 scratching in the wainscot, and it becomes evi- 

 dent that the heterogeneity of the impressions 

 received by an organism is paralleled by the 

 heterogeneity of the adjustments by which it 

 responds to them. The multiplication of the 

 objects and relations of which any organism can 

 take cognizance involves of necessity a growing 

 complexity in the actions by which it adapts it- 

 self to their presence. In civilized man, whose 

 immensely developed cephalic ganglia bear wit- 

 ness to the predominance of psychical over phy- 

 sical life, this correlated advance in heterogene- 



138 



