5<d Heredity, Variation and Ge?iius 



outside the very limited domain of the senses, and 

 impotent to conceive what is and happens there, 

 they necessarily represent it lamely in terms of 

 subtilized or magnified sense-perception. Giving 

 the characters of sense and experience to that 

 which lies beyond sense and experience they 

 fill the infinitesimally minute with imagined 

 atoms and corpuscles, and people the immensity 

 and eternity with celestial and terrestrial gods, 

 benignant or malignant, who feel, think and act 

 as they feel, think and act, only more benignantly 

 or malignantly ; all these at last but sense-con- 

 ditioned symbols or fanciful objectivations of the 

 infinite reality which cannot be known, and of 

 which all that can be known, mind and its func- 

 tions included, are phenomena.'' 1 



It is natural to think crudely of the subtilties of 

 Nature even when conception is most subtilized. 

 How help thinking them save in known terms of 

 physics and chemistry ? The theory of Pangenesis 

 put forth by Darwin postulated infinitely minute 



* A wonderful conceit it would truly be that the ultimate 

 reality of things can ever be represented in any terms of human 

 sense and expression, can indeed be conceived intellectually 

 otherwise than in the man-made world which the senses make 

 for their human users? As well imagine the ant-made world 

 in which the busily working creature lives and moves, urged by 

 a sense of moral responsibility not to waste a precious moment 

 of its short mortal life, is anything like the world of human 

 beings panting for and expecting immortal values, albeit seldom 

 working with equal industrious zeal and conscientious feeling 

 for the good of the community. 



