THE INTERPRETER I4I 



the mistake of wasting a capital c U ' upon it." * 

 What he was sure about was that there were many 

 things concerning which he knew nothing, and which, 

 so far as he could see, were out of reach of human 

 faculties. 



Whether these things are knowable by any one else 

 is exactly one of those matters which is beyond my 

 knowledge, though I may have a tolerably strong opin- 

 ion as to the probabilities of the case. Relatively to 

 myself, I am quite sure that the region of uncertainty 

 — the nebulous country in which words play the part 

 of realities — is far more extensive than I could wish. 2 



But his endorsement of Mr. Spencer's contention as 

 to the fundamental unity of the organic and the in- 

 organic was emphatic. In an address to the Interna- 

 tional Medical Congress in 1881 he says: — 



In nature, nothing is at rest, nothing is amorphous ; 

 the simplest particle of that which men in their blind- 

 ness are pleased to call " brute matter " is a vast ag- 

 gregate of molecular mechanisms performing compli- 

 cated movements of immense rapidity, and sensitively 

 adjusting themselves to every change in the surround- 

 ing world. 



And living matter differs from other matter in de- 

 gree and not in kind ; the microcosm repeats the 

 macrocosm ; and one chain of causation connects the 

 nebulous original of suns and planetary systems with 

 the protoplasmic foundation of life and organisation. 3 



1 Coll. Essays, v. p. 311. See Note, infra. 



2 lb., p. 311. 3 Coll. Essays, iii. p. 371. 



