jh. in.J EVOLUTION AND DISSOLUTION. 317 



philosophy ; and that in seeking to formulate fho past, 

 present, and future history of that aggregate of sensible 

 phenomena which constitutes the knowable unhorse, philo- 

 sophy transcends the sphere of science in just the same way 

 that science transcends the sphere of ordinary knowledge, 

 and in no other. A large portion of that imperfectly- 

 organized knowledge which serves to guide the actions even 

 of the least educated men, consists of information concerning 

 the past and future careers of the objects which surround 

 them. Thus we recognize the child of twenty years ago in 

 the grown man of to-day ; we know that the coat which the 

 man wears recently existed in the shape of unspun and 

 unwoven wool upon a sheep's back ; and that the grass 

 upon which this sheep fed, consisted of matter integrated by 

 countless seeds with the aid of solar radiance. And we 

 know, besides, that the man and the coat which he wears, 

 the sheep and the grass upon which it feeds, must alike pass 

 from their present state of aggregation into a future state of 

 dissolution. This kind of knowledge science is ever extend- 

 ing, as when it traces back the man and the sheep to 

 microscopic germ -cells, and the wool and the grass to certain 

 nitrogenous and hydro-carbon compounds, pre-existing in 

 the atmosphere and soil. Obviously, therefore, it is the 

 business of philosophy, extending and generalizing 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 features 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 complete 

 account of anything " must include its appearance out of 

 the imperceptible, and its disappearance into the impercep- 

 tible." Now a change of state by virtue of which any object 

 ceases to be imperceptible and becomes perceptible, must be 



