400 



indifference that they would show to the conceptions of mediocre 



Perhaps they would even wonder what one can find to admire 

 in the unrivalled collection, which is there assembled. 



There is surely wanting in the minds of such persons thai high, 



mony with the great artists whose creations are before them. 



Creations I said, and I use the word intentionally. If there is 

 one power of the human soul, which more nearly than any other 

 approaches the faculty of creation, it is that by which the almost 

 inspired artist develops out of a rude block of stone, or out of 

 such mean materials as canvass and metallic pastes of various 

 colors, figures which surpass in beauty, and in power of exciting 



Yet these anaesthetic and nonappreciative persons are just as 

 highly educated, and in their respective positions as good and 

 useful members of the social organism as any that may be found. 

 I maintain only, they would never make good students of biology. 



In like manner, by way of illustrating the foregoing observa- 

 tions, there are some, who in looking at the phenomena of the 

 external Universe, may recognize only Chance, or the "fortui- 

 tous concourse of atoms," producing certain resultant motions. 

 Others, having studied more deeply the nature of things, will per- 

 ceive the existence of laws, binding and correlating the events 

 they observe. Others again, not superior to the latter in intelli- 



between these phenomena, and the indications of an intellectual or 

 aesthetic or moral plan, similar to that which influences their own 

 actions, when directed to the attaining of a particular result. 



These last will recognize in the operations of nature the direc- 

 tion of a Human Intelligence, greatly enlarged, capable of modi- 

 fying at its will influences beyond our control ; or they will appre- 

 ciate in themselves a resemblance to a superhuman intelligence 

 which enables them to be in sympathy with its actions. 



Either may be true in individual instances of this class of 

 minds ; one or other must be true ; I care not which, for to me the 

 propositions are in this argument identical, though in speculative 

 discussions, they may be regarded as at almost the opposite poles 

 of religious belief. All that I plead for is, that those who have 

 not this perceptive power, and who in the present condition of 



