284 Philosophy of Botany. 



sidcred l)y physicists an ' imponderable matter," of which 

 we cannot form any sensual conception, and whose existence 

 we deduce from its functions — light, electricity, magnetism, 

 and radiant heat — which arc mutually convertii^le energies and 

 indestructible. A\'e can only gixe it the attribute " ethereal," 

 since it is not comparable with any of the qualities of ponder- 

 able matter. Ether is the supporter and transmitter of all 

 modes of motion, the harmonizcr of cosmical processes. Po- 

 tential and actual energy, heat and electricity, are in the same 

 constant play- of alternations as the molecular chemism of 

 the elements, and controlled by the laws of the preservation 

 of energy and matter, and are always the same quantitatively. 



As a third realit}^ we conceive mind as a cosmic energy. In 

 its action upon the psychic organs of organisms it efifects con- 

 sciousness, the idea of the ego, which, with its percepts, sensa- 

 tions, concepts, memories, desires, and volitions, we, by 

 traditional acceptance, know as the soul, a metaphysical en- 

 tity, and which we have been taught to consider as different 

 from the body, although with widely differing opinions as re- 

 gards their mutual relations. 



This cosmic mind can possibly have no semblance to the 

 highest intelligence we know of, the human mind. 



The human mind lives, so to speak, within a triple environ- 

 ment of its expansiveness. 



We are aware of the outer world by sensual perceptions, 

 out of which, in another cerebral department, the percepts 

 are transformed into concepts, construed into thoughts and 

 ideas, processes, which ultimately enable our reflective ca- 

 pacity to understand that what we think we know of the world 

 outside of us is only a reflected image of the reality of things ; 

 but what all things may be by themselves, beyond the inter- 

 pretations of our senses, we are utterly in the dark, without a 

 ray of hope or probability of ever passing this limitation. 



It appears to me that the cosmic mind, unlimited as we as- 

 sume it to be in its expanse, must also be beyond all estima- 

 tion, penetrating, knowing the inside of things as well as their 

 outer appearances. The only revelation from the sacred 

 books of the East we are assured to have been given concern- 

 ing it, was given but once — to Moses on Sinai — in the words • 



