the nature of umbrellas or of men.

It may be observed, further, that whatever ideas he was able to form
respecting either were positively false--so contrary to truth as to be
worse than none, and simply dangerous to himself, so far as he might be
induced to act upon them--that, namely, an umbrella was an eatable
thing, or a man a conquerable one, that the individual man who looked at
him was hostile to him or that his purposes could be interfered with by
ejection of ink. Every effort made by the fish under these convictions
was harmful to himself; his only wisdom would have been to lie quietly
and unreflectively in his pool.

And with us painters also, the only result of any efforts we make to
acquaint ourselves with the subjects of metaphysical inquiry has been an
increased sense of the prudence of lying placidly and unreflectively in
our pools, or at least limiting ourselves to such gentle efforts of
imagination as may be consistent with the as yet imperfectly developed
powers, I do not say even of cephalopodic, but of Ascidian nervous
centers.

303. But it may be easily imagined how pleasantly, to persons thus
subdued in self-estimation, the hope presents itself which is involved
in the Darwinian theory, that their pools themselves may be capable of
indefinite extension, and their natures of indefinite development--the
hope that our descendants may one day be ashamed of us, and debate the
question of their parentage with astonishment and disgust.

And it seems to me that the aim of elementary metaphysical study might
henceforth become more practical than that of any other science. For in
hitherto taking little cognizance of the limitation of thought by the
structure of the body, we have surely also lost sight of the power of
certain modes of thought over the processes of that structure. Taking,
for instance, the emotion of anger, of which the cephalopoda are indeed
as capable as we are, but inferior to us in being unable to decide
whether they do well to be angry or not, I do not think the chemical
effect of that emotion on the particles of the blood, in decomposing and
otherwise paralyzing or debilitating them, has been sufficiently
examined, nor the actual quantity of nervous energy which a fit of anger
of given violence withdraws from the body and restores to space, neither
the correlative power of volition in restraining the passion, or in
directing the choice of salutary thought, as of salutary herbs on
st