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grains of reality. In order to do this it must keep close to 
the concrete in arguing out the abstract. 
But let us take an illustration of this from that which will, 
at the same time, be an important step in our present inquiry. 
We lay hold of an individual living substance. There it is, 
and ideas associated with it are soon occupying our minds. 
That individual had a parent substance, and in thought we 
see that. It will itself produce, we may safely believe, as it 
has been produced. Let us say that it is a sapling, and grew 
from a seed which was the produce of a former tree. We need 
not go further back, at present, but rather go forward, keeping 
strictly in view the plant we have in hand. This, we shall say, 
will become a stately oak and produce acorns, which will in 
their turn grow into oaks and produce acorns too. Or let our 
example be an animal growing from an embryo produced by a 
former animal, and ere long to be the parent of another 
embryo, or of many embryos, that will become animals and 
produce other embryos in the chain of living substances, on 
one link of which we have fastened for our present purpose. 
Here then, we have a substance, and not an abstraction ; but 
we are in search of abstractions such as will stand in some true 
relation to this and all kindred beings in their life-changes. 
We are in search of an idea, or ideas, that will accord with that 
change from which these changes started as from their true 
original, and from which the constantly-changing* forms of 
those living substances took their character. What shall be 
the order of our inquiry ? 
A germ is as truly a terminus as it is an origin. An acorn 
is a fruit as truly as it is a seed. If we look strictly at the 
chain of changes in the order of nature, the aspect in which 
we see the germ as a fruit is before the seed aspect, not after 
it. There is no seed which is not the result of maturity in 
that whose seed it is. If we begin at our present stand-point 
and go back along the chain of changes that have taken place 
in the succession of any living substance we can reach no 
germ which is not the result of matured growth, any more than 
we can reach a matured organism which has not followed in 
the wake of a germ. What good reason can any one give why 
we should fancy that the origin of such a succession must be 
in the seed and not in the matured individual which produced, 
or so to speak, terminated in that seed ? Why should men ; s 
minds gather round embryos when they are in search of the 
origin of beings ? I can think of no satisfactory reply to such 
questions. 
But these give rise to other questions of similar import. It 
is true that the seed is smaller than the tree — the embryo is 
