CONCLUSION. 315 



like the kingdom of Leaven, within us, and witMn all 

 things at all times everywhere ? There is design, or 

 cunning, but it is a cunning not despotically fashion- 

 ing us from withoul as a potter fashions his clay, but 

 inhering democratically within the body which is its 

 highest outcome, as life inheres within an animal or 

 plant. 



All animals and plants are corporations, or forms 

 of democracy, and may be studied by the light of 

 these, as democracies, not infrequently, by that of 

 animals and plants. The solution of the difficult prob- 

 lem of reflex action, for example, is thus facilitated, 

 by supposing it to be departmental in character ; that 

 is to say, by supposing it to be. action of which the 

 department that attends to it is alone cognisant, and 

 which is not referred to the central government so 

 long as things go normally. As long, therefore, as this 

 is the case, the central government is unconscious of 

 what is going on, but its being thus unconscious is no 

 argument that the department is unconscious also. 



I know that contradiction in terms lurks within 

 much that I have said, but the texture of the world is 

 a warp and woof of contradiction in terms; of con- 

 tinuity in discontinuity, and discontinuity in continuity ; 

 of unity in diversity, and of diversity in unity. As 

 in the development of a fugue, where, when the sub- 

 ject and counter subjecthavebeen enounced, there must 

 thenceforth be nothing new, and yet all must be new, so 

 throughout organic life — which is as a fugue developed 

 to great length from a very simple subject — everything 

 is linked on to and grows out of that which comes 



