LECTURES AND ESSA YS 



intellect of man. As little in our day as ' 

 in the days of Job can man by searching j 

 find this Power out. Considered funda- I 

 mentally, then, it is by the operation of 

 an insoluble mystery that life on earth is ! 

 evolved, species differentiated, and mind 

 unfolded, from their prepotent elements 

 in the immeasurable past. 



The strength of the doctrine of Evolu- 

 tion consists, not in an experimental j 

 demonstration (for the subject is hardly j 

 accessible to this mode of proof), but I 

 in its general harmony with scientific j 

 thought. From contrast, moreover, it ! 

 derives enormous relative cogency. On 

 the one side we have a theory (if it could 

 with any propriety be so called) derived, 

 as were the theories referred to at the 

 beginning of this Address, not from the 

 study of nature, but from the observa- 

 tion of men a theory which converts 

 the Power whose garment is seen in 

 the visible universe into an Artificer, 

 fashioned after the human model, and 

 acting by broken efforts as man is seen 

 to act. On the other side we have the 

 conception that all we see around us, 

 and all we feel within us the phenomena 

 of physical nature as well as those of the 

 human mind have their unsearchable 

 roots in a cosmical life, if I dare apply 

 the term, an infinitesimal span of which 

 is offered to the investigation of man. 

 And even this span is only knowable in 

 part. We can trace the development of 

 a nervous system, and correlate with it 

 the parallel phenomena of sensation and 

 thought. We see with undoubting cer- 

 tainty that they go hand in hand. But 

 we try to soar in a vacuum the moment 

 we seek to comprehend the connection 



he evidently doubts the power of the chick to 

 pick up grains of corn without preliminary 

 lessons. On this point, he says, further experi- 

 ments are needed. Such experiments have 

 been since made by Mr. Spalding, and they 

 seem to prove conclusively that the chick does 

 not need a single moment's tuition to enable it 

 to stand, run, govern the muscles of its eyes, 

 and peck. Helmholtz, however, is contending 

 against the notion of pre-established harmony ; 

 and I am not aware of his views as to the 

 organisation of experiences of race or breed. 



between them. An Archimedean fulcrum 

 is here required which the human mind 

 cannot command ; and the effort to 

 solve the problem to borrow a com- 

 parison from an illustrious friend of 

 mine is like that of a man trying to lift 

 himself by his own waistband. All that 

 has been said in this discourse is to be 

 taken in connection with this funda- 

 mental truth. When " nascent senses " 

 are spoken of, when " the differentiation 

 of a tissue at first vaguely sensitive all 

 over " is spoken of, and when these 

 possessions and processes are associated 

 with " the modification of an organism 

 by its environment," the same parallelism, 

 without contact, or even approach to 

 contact, is implied. Man the object is 

 separated by an impassable gulf from 

 man the subject. There is no motor 

 energy in the human intellect to carry 

 it, without logical rupture, from the one 

 to the other. 



9. 



THE doctrine of Evolution derives man, 

 in his totality, from the interaction of 

 organism and environment through 

 countless ages past. The Human Under- 

 standing, for example that faculty which 

 Mr. Spencer has turned so skilfully round 

 upon its own antecedents is itself a 

 result of the play between organism and 

 environment through cosmic ranges of 

 time. Never, surely, did prescription 

 plead so irresistible a claim. But then 

 it comes to pass that, over and above 

 his understanding, there are many other 

 things appertaining to man whose pre- 

 scriptive rights are quite as strong as 

 those of the understanding itself. It is 

 a result, for example, of the play of 

 organism and environment that sugar is 

 sweet, and that aloes are bitter ; that the 

 smell of henbane differs from the perfume 

 of a rose. Such facts of consciousness 

 (for which, by the way, no adequate 

 reason has ever been rendered) are quite 

 as old as the understanding ; and many 

 other things can boast an equally ancient 

 origin. Mr. Spencer at one place refers 



