AS KNOWLEDGE, DISCIPLINE, AND POWER 307 



lies between the human mind and that mind of which the universe 

 is but a thought and an expression. For man, looking from the 

 heights of science into the surrounding universe, is as a traveller 

 who has ascended the Brocken and sees, in the clouds, a vast image, 

 dim and awful, and yet in its essential lineaments resembling himself 

 In the words of the only poet of our day who has fused true science 

 into song, the philosopher, looking into Nature, 



" Sees his shadow glory-crowned, 

 He sees himself in all he sees."' 



Tennyson^ s ^^ In JMevioriam.''^ 



The mathematician discovers in the universe a " Divine Geometry ; " 

 the physicist and the chemist everywhere find that the operations of 

 nature may be expressed in terms of the human intellect ; and, in like 

 manner, among living beings, the naturalist discovers that their 

 " vital " processes are not performed by the gift of powers and 

 faculties entirely peculiar and irrespective of those which are met 

 with in the physical world ; but that they are built up and their parts 

 adapted together, in a manner which forcibly reminds us of the mode 

 in which a human artificer builds up a complex piece of mechanism, 

 by skilfully combining the simple powers and forces of the matter 

 around him. The numberless facts which illustrate this truth are 

 familiar to all, through the works of Paley and the natural theolo- 

 gians, whose arguments may be summed up thus — that the structure 

 of living beings is, in the main, such as would result from the benevo- 

 lent operation, under the conditions of the physical world, of an 

 intelligence similar in kind, however superior in degree, to our own. 

 Granting the validity of the premises, that from the similarity of 

 effects we may argue to a similarity of cause, does natural history 

 allow our conclusions to rest here? Is this utilitarian adaptation to 

 a benevolent purpose the chief or even the leading feature of that 

 great shadow, or, we should more rightly say, of that vast archetype 

 of the human mind, which everywhere looms upon us through nature ? 

 The reply of natural history is clearly in the negative. She tells us 

 that utilitarian adaptation to purpose is not the greatest principle 

 worked out in nature, and that its value, even as an instrument of 

 research, has been enormously overrated. 



How is it then, that not only in popular works, but in the writings 

 of men of deservedly high authority, we find the opposite dogma — 

 that the principle of adaptation of means to ends is the great instru- 

 ment of research in natural history — enunciated as an axiom? If we 

 trace out the doctiine to its fountain head, we shall find that it was 

 primarily put forth by Cuvier — the prince of modern naturalists. Is 



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