26 THE LIGHT OF DAT 



world, for theology has long ago made us familiar 

 with this claim, but the bringing of it forward in 

 the name of science and substituting it for the spir- 

 itual world which science really recognizes. In fol- 

 lowing his argument one constantly feels the ground 

 disappearing beneath him or before him. His spir- 

 itual kingdom does not belong to the same order of 

 fact as the other two : it is not a link, or a step in 

 a natural series, but a domain by itself entirely 

 apart from human reason or experience. In clapping 

 it on top of the physical universe in the way it has 

 been done here, and claiming that its position there 

 is logical or scientific, is to do violence to common 

 sense. Its position there is forced and arbitrary. 

 In the order of nature what goes atop of the animal 

 world is the world of consciousness, the world of 

 mind and spirit, which attains to its full flowering 

 in man. This is no limited or accidental world, 

 thrust upon the few, and denied to the many, but 

 a world which belongs to the natural order of the 

 universe. The passage to it from the animal is so 

 gradual that science cannot say where the one ends 

 and the other begins. In the same manner the ani- 

 mal fades iato the vegetable, and the vegetable into 

 the mineral. There are no breaks, there are no 

 gulfs fixed. " There exists no insurmountable 

 chasm between organic and inorganic nature," says 

 Hankel, speaking for the most thorough science of 

 his times. Huxley and Tyndall and the leading 

 French scientists have reached the same conclusion. 

 The organic and the inorganic are composed of the 



