ON EVOLUTION. 291: 
20, Butif there is really something which feels, one of its rela- 
tions to the organised aggregate of molecules with which, 
wheresover discovered, it is found in close association, must 
needs be that of tenant. Whether it comes into existence 
before there is even a single room to receive it, and, if so, 
whether it has unconsciously a hand in building the house it 
is destined to occupy—these are questions which it might be 
interesting to ventilate, but which, so far as my purpose is 
concerned, may be left unanswered. ‘Thus far, moreover, it 
is immaterial whether or not we can determine the grade of 
life at which the sort of susceptibility to outward changes that 
is evinced by appropriate movements becomes associated with 
actual sensation—in other words, with the most fundamental 
kind of psychical affection of which we have experience; and 
we may allow it to remain an open question whether the cases 
in which, in organisms supposed to be animal, apparent indi- 
viduality, instead of being destroyed, is multiplied by 
mechanical division, exhibit the production of new individuals 
really sentient, or whether the kind of sensibility of which 
they furnish evidence may be ranked with that of the so- 
called sensitive plant, and may be regarded as having, in the 
functional susceptibility of the efferent portion of a developed 
nervous system, its analogue in the higher types of life. I 
still hold myself at liberty to distinguish from the organs or 
instruments of sensation the things which feel, and to con- 
template the latter, relatively to non-sentient matter, as an evo- 
lution of something previously latent in the resources of 
Originative Power, as an advance in the revelation of the 
HKternal Idea. 
21. ‘The next step in advance is the commencementof psychical 
differentiation. In view of the possibility that variations of 
type may have arisen in the way of progressive development, 
it will here occur to us to ask whether limits determined by 
the capacity of its soul have been assigned to the develop- 
ments which a sentient organism may undergo in corre- 
spondence with modifications of its environment, or whether 
the soul is, so to speak, illimitably elastic and indefinitely 
expansible in all directions. If (to illustrate my meaning by 
a further use of metaphors I employed just now) some con- 
siderable improvement of the house should so change its 
character as to necessitate on the part of the tenant a superior 
style of living, must he make way for another tenant? or will 
he, if he does not possess already, be supplied with, as a 
matter of course, the means of adapting his ménage and his 
scale of expenditure to the situation in which he will find 
himself, on the supposition that he is allowed to remain ? One 
