XCiV REPORT—1874. 
fact the whole provess of evolution is the manifestation of a Power abso- 
lutely inscrutable to the intellect of man. As little in our day as in the days 
of Job can man by searching find this Power out. Considered fundamentally, 
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. ‘There is, you will observe, no very 
rank materialism here. 
The strength of the doctrine of evolution consists, not in an experimental 
demonstration (for the subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof), 
but in its general harmony with scientific thought. From contrast, more- 
over, it derives enormous relative strength. 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 observation of men—a theory which conyerts 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 sce 
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 un- 
doubting certainty that they go hand in hand. But we try to soar in a 
vacuum the moment we seek to comprehend the connexion between them. 
An Archimedean fulcrum is here required which the human mind cannot 
command; and the effort to solve the problem, to borrow a comparison from 
an illustrious friend of mine, is like the effort of a man trying to lift himself 
by his own waistband, All that has been here said is to be taken in connexion 
with this fundamental 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 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 intellect to carry it 
without logical rupture from the one to the other. 
Further, the doctrine of evolution derives man, in his totality, from the in- 
teraction of organism and environment through countless ages past. The 
Human Understanding, 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 ap- 
pertaining to man whose prescriptive 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 
of the chick to pick up grains of corn without preliminary lessons. On this point, he 
says, further experiments are needed. Such experiments haye been since made by Mr. 
Spalding, aided, I believe, in some of his observations by the accomplished and deeply 
lamented Lady Amberly ; and they seem to prove conclusively that the chick dees 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 preestablished harmony ; 
and I am not aware of his views as to the organization of experiences of race or breed, 
