194 Lif^ ^^1^ Love. 



bors, his hunger as imperative as theirs, his body 

 nourished as theirs are. He, too, needs air, hght, 

 and warmth, and without them must die. He, 

 too, must reproduce in offspring his physical form 

 that his race may not become extinct. 



Not only in physical phenomena, however, do 

 we find man united to all other life. As his body 

 is an unfolding of the possibilities of protoplasm, 

 that strange basis of all living forms, so are his 

 intellectual and moral faculties an unfolding of 

 certain possibilities discernible in the lower life. 



Not a single power resides in man whose roots 

 cannot be traced down into that great world of 

 life of which he is the fair blossom. 



In one particular only does man differ essentially 

 from the lower life. To him has come a transcen- 

 dent development of those nerve centres by means 

 of which he is enabled to comprehend the world 

 about him. The body, which encloses and circum- 

 scribes the living creature like a wall, keeping it 

 distinct from the world without, in man offers less 

 obstruction to the flowing in of the universe. In 

 him the channels of communication with the outer 

 world are freer. To a degree unique in living be- 

 ings, he can comprehend the world in which he 

 lives. Not because of superior physical powers is 

 this so, however, for the lower animals excel him in 

 many directions ; the dog can smell better, the eagle 

 can see farther, the deer can run faster, the lion 

 can outdo him in muscular strength; yet he has a 



