28 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. i. 



see a freshwater polyp seek the darkest corner of a vessel 

 exposed to direct sunlight. Among the higher animals 

 possessed of developed organs of sense and of relatively- 

 complex nervous systems, the classifying process is carried to 

 much greater completeness. Along with a tolerably wide 

 set of distinctions between various classes of plants and 

 weaker animals that are more or less useful and desirable as 

 food, and between various classes of inorganic phenomena 

 that are serviceable or dangerous, and of stronger animals 

 that are to be dreaded as enemies, — there is also a clear 

 perception of the distinct modes of action involved in the 

 acquisition of desired objects, and in the escape from menacing 

 dangers; forming an aggregate of knowledge which implies 

 quite an extensive comparison and classification of ex- 

 periences. Besides all this, there is a set of special distinc- 

 tions between special orders of phenomena, between the 

 various kinds and degrees of sound, odour and temperature, 

 which in some cases exceed in discriminative accuracy any of 

 the corresponding empirical distinctions which the human 

 mind is able to recognize. And in the dog, who has from 

 time immemorial been the friend and servant of man, there 

 is superadded to all this a rudimentary moral classification of 

 actions as praiseworthy or blameworthy, as is seen, for instance, 

 in his guilty attitude when detected in committing^ a raid 

 upon some neighbouring sheepfold. Coming lastly to man, 

 but little illustration will be needed to show that his acquisi- 

 tion of knowledge is in like manner the progressive establish- 

 ment of distinctions. The supremely important knowledge 

 which we acquire during early infancy consists in the mental 

 grouping of objects according to their various properties ; in 

 the gradual recognition of distinctions between hardness and 

 softness, sweetness and acidity, rigidity and elasticity, rough- 

 ness and smoothness, humidity and dryness, roundness and 

 angularity, — between various shades and intensities of temper- 

 ature, of sound, and of colour, — between matter w 7 hich resists, 



