XI PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE 473 



the same manner, and you shall be able to dis- 

 tinguish no difference between them ; but let me 

 take a pair of pincers, and if my hand is steadj 

 enough to do it, let me just lightly crush together 

 the bearings of the balance-wheel, or force to a 

 slightly different angle the teeth of the escape- 

 ment of one of them, and of course you know the 

 immediate result will be that the watch, so treated, 

 from that moment will cease to go. But what 

 proportion is there between the structural altera- 

 tion and the functional result ? Is it not perfectly 

 obvious that the alteration is of the minutest kind, 

 yet that, slight as it is, it has produced an infinite 

 difference in the performance of the functions of 

 these two instruments ? 



Well, now, apply that to the present question. 

 What is it that constitutes and makes man what 

 he is ? What is it but his power of language 

 that language giving him the means of recording 

 his experience making every generation some- 

 what wiser than its predecessor more in accord- 

 ance with the established order of the universe ? 



What is it but this power of speech, of record- 

 ing experience, which enables men to be men 

 looking before and after and, in some dim sense, 

 understanding the working of this wondrous uni- 

 verse and which distinguishes man from the 

 whole of the brute world ? I say that this func- 

 tional difference is vast, unfathomable, and truly 

 infinite in its consequences ; and I say at the same 



