COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



career, and in thus further modifying the in- 

 herited tendencies with which its offspring start 

 in hfe. In such an animal the organized experi- 

 ence of the race counts for much, but the spe- 

 cial experience of the individual counts for some- 

 thing in altering the future career of the race. 

 Such an animal is capable of psychical progress, 

 and such an animal must begin life, not with 

 matured faculties, but as an infant. Instead of 

 a few actually realized capacities, it starts with 

 a host of potential capacities, of which the play 

 of circumstance must determine what ones shall 

 be realizable. 



Manifestly, therefore, the very state of things 

 which made psychical variation more advanta- 

 geous to the progenitors of mankind than physi- 

 cal variation, — this very state of things simul- 

 taneously conspired to enhance the progressive- 

 ness of primeval man and to prolong the period 

 of his infancy, until the plastic or malleable part 

 of his life came to extend over several years, 

 instead of terminating in rigidity in the course 

 of four or five months, as with the orang-ou- 

 tang. Upon the consequences of this state of 

 things, in gradually bringing about that capa- 

 city for progress which distinguishes man from 

 all lower animals, I need not further enlarge. 

 What we have here especially to note, amid 

 the entanglement of all these causes conspiring 

 to educe humanity from animality, is the fact, 

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