338 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 
all its meaning and possibility when taken out of the 
category of human experience and discussed in terms of 
philosophy. In like manner can any 
simple fact be made to appear as myth 
or dream. A man can be brought to 
doubt the existence of himself or of any object about 
him. For instance, take the discussion of “ John’s John” 
and of ‘‘Thomas’s John,” as given by Dr. Holmes. Is 
the real John the John he appears to John himself? Or 
is he real only in the form in which Thomas regards 
him, or as he looks to Richard and Henry, whose inter- 
est in him is progressively less? All that we know of 
the external universe is derived from impressions made 
directly or indirectly on our nervous systems and from 
recorded impressions made on the systems of others: 
and a part of this external universe we ourselves are. 
All that we know even of ourselves is that which is 
external to ourselves. Thus, with all this, each man 
forms in his mind a universe of his own. “My mind 
to me a kingdom is,” and this kingdom in all its parts 
is somewhat different from any other mental kingdom. 
It is continually changing. It was made but once and 
will never be duplicated. When my vital processes 
cease, this kingdom will vanish “ like the baseless fabric 
of a vision, leaving not a wreck behind.” Our mind 
is of the “stuff that dreams are made of”; and our 
bodies—what are they? Physically each man is an 
alliance of animals, each one of a single cell, each cell 
with its processes of life, growth, death, and reproduc- 
tion, each one with its own “cell-soul” which presides 
over these processes. In the alliance of these cells, 
forming tissues and organs, we have the phenomena of 
mutual help and mutual dependence. In man we find 
the phenomena of animal life on a larger and more 
differentiated scale than in the lower forms, but to em- 
Ineffectiveness 
of reason. 
