men--a theory which converts the Power whose
garment is seen in the visible universe into an Artificer, fashioned
after the human model, and acting by broken efforts as man is seen to
act. On the other side we have the conception that all we see around
us, and all we feel within us--the phenomena; physical nature as well
as those of the human mind--have their unsearchable roots in a
cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an infinitesimal span of
which is offered to the investigation of man. And even this span is
only knowable in part. We can trace the development of a nervous
system, and correlate with it the parallel phenomena of sensation and
thought. We see with undoubting certainty that they go hand in hand.
But we try to soar in a vacuum the moment we seek to comprehend the
connection between them. An Archimedean fulcrum is here required
which the human mind cannot command; and the effort to solve the
problem--to borrow a comparison from an illustrious friend of mine--is
like that of a man trying to lift himself by his own waistband. All
that has been said in this discourse is to be taken in connection with
this fundamental truth.

When' nascent senses' are spoken of, when 'the differentiation of a
tissue at first vaguely sensitive all over' is spoken of, and when
these possessions and processes are associated with 'the modification
of an organism by its environment,' the same parallelism, without
contact, or even approach to contact, is implied. Man the object is
separated by an impassable gulf from man the subject. There is no
motor energy in the human intellect to carry it, without logical
rupture, from the one to the other.

9.

The doctrine of Evolution derives man, in his totality, from the
interaction of organism and environment through countless ages past.
The Human Understanding, for example,--that faculty which Mr. Spencer
has turned so skilfully round upon its own antecedents--is itself a
result of the play between organism and environment through cosmic
ranges of time. Never, surely, did prescription plead so irresistible
a claim. But then it comes to pass that, over and above his
understanding, there are many other things appertaining to man, whose
prescriptive rights are quite as strong as those of the understanding
itself. It is a result, for example, of the play of organism and
environment that sugar is sweet, and that aloes are bitter; that the
smell of henbane differs' from the p