entirely absent from the universe before. All that is supposed to vary in the qualities derived from ancestors is the proportion in which they are mingled, and, so to say, the mode of application to the universe outside. But that a necessary being should give birth to a being with any amount, however limited, of moral freedom is infinitely less conceivable than that parents of the insect or fish type should give birth to a perfect mammal. An accidental variation only means a variation of which you cannot determine the direction; but you can determine that the direction of variation will not outrage all the laws of parentage. . . . . If all the lower laws of force and life are absolutely fixed and inviolable, then they cannot revoke their own constitution when they issue out of the region of physiology into that of moral life. If it be the essence of all things to follow fixed laws, if there is nothing but unchangeable force moulding the universe by its gradually concentrating strength, then the conscience of man is a delusion, and his sense of responsibility and freedom must be explained away. . . . . The logic of science is consistent, but it does not explain freedom. We know that we are morally free; and we know that a free person cannot be the issue of helplessly unfolded laws. It is impossible for necessity to emancipate itself. Only if the observed necessity has been the 'must' of a Divine free-will, can that 'must' be withdrawn, and freedom restored wherever the materials for self-determination have been granted. The identity of all the sciences is assumed only at the expense of the falsification of some, and the total abrogation of one. The main facts of man's moral nature-all those on which the great interests of mankind centre, all which are the life of reverence and love-are swept away into meaningless unreality by the absolute identification of moral science with the natural sciences on the summit of which it stands. It is dangerous enough to scientific reality to confuse intelligence with instinct and to describe memory as 'a weak form' of perception; but it is the suicide of a science to manufacture a theory of moral obligation out of the materials of physical necessity— a theory of vision for the blind."

Indeed, man being, as the mind of each man may tell him, a being not only conscious, but conscious of his own consciousness; one not only acting on inference, but capable of analysing the process of inference; a creature not only capable of acting well or ill, but of understanding the ideas "virtue" and "moral obligation," with their correlatives freedom of choice and responsibility-man being all this, it is at once obvious that the principal part of his being is his mental power.

"In nature there is nothing great but man,

In man there is nothing great but mind.”

Nevertheless, man's body must be fairly compared with the bodies of other species of animals more or less like him, and his corporeal affinities thus estimated.

Let us suppose ourselves, then, to be without bodies ourselves, to be purely immaterial intelligences, acquainted only with a world peopled like our own except that the species man had never lived upon it, yet that somehow the dead body of a man was presented for our examination.

We should then, I think, consider such body to be that of some large ape, and of one differing less widely from the apes most like it in form than do such apes differ from others, e.g., from marmosets. Yet we should note some striking specialities of structure. We should be especially struck with its vast brain, and we should be the more impressed by it when we noted how bulky was the body to which that brain belonged. We should be so impressed because we should have previously noted that, as a general rule, in backboned animals, the larger the bulk of the body the less the relative size of the brain. From our knowledge of the habits and faculties of various animals in relation to their brainstructure, we should be led to infer that the animal man was one possessing great power of co-ordinating movements, and that his emotional sensibility would have been considerable. But, above all, his powers of imagination would have been deemed by us to have been prodigious, with a corresponding faculty of collecting, grouping, and preserving sensible images of objects in complex and coherent aggregations to a degree much greater than in any other animal with which we were before acquainted. Did we know that all the various other kinds of existing animals had been developed one from another by evolution; did we know that the numerous species had been evolved from potential to actual existence by implanted powers in matter, aided by the influence of incident forces; then we might reasonably argue by analogy that a similar mode of origin had given rise to the exceptional being, the body of which we were examining.

If, however, it were made clear to us-immaterial intelli

gences-that the dead body before us had been in life endowed with an activity not merely animal but intellectual, so that man's mind was an active intelligence like our own-if, in other words, we understood that the difference between him and all other animals was not a difference of degree but of kind -if we could be made to understand that its vast power of collecting and grouping sensible images served but to supply its intellectual activity with materials whereby it might perceive not merely sensible phenomena, but also abstract qualities of objects--if we became aware that the sounds uttered by it in life were not exclusively emotional expressions, but were the external signs of general conceptions, then the aspect of the question would be entirely altered for us. If we further came to know that the being we were considering had been endowed with the marvellous gift of free-will, by which his intelligence could interrupt and dominate the vast chain of merely physical causation, we should then surely conclude that as that activity and the acting body together formed but one unity, and as that intellectual activity was not only different in kind from that displayed by any other animal but indefinitely more different from the activity of the highest brute than the activity of the highest brute is different from that of the lowest-for these reasons we should conclude that man's origin was different in kind from theirs. The lesson then concerning man, which we seem to gather from nature as revealed to us in our own consciousness and as externally observed, is that man differs fundamentally from every other creature which presents itself to our senses. That he differs absolutely, and therefore differs in origin also. Although a strict unity, one material whole with one form, or force (not made of two parts mutually acting according to the vulgar notion of soul and body), yet he is seen to be a compound unity in which two distinct orders of being unite.

Conclusion.

He is manifestly "animal," with the reflex functions, feelings, desires, and emotions of an animal. Yet equally manifest is it that he has a special nature "looking before and

after" which constitutes him "rational." Ruling, comprehending, interpreting, and completing much in nature, we also see in him that which manifestly points above nature. We see this, since we know that he can conceive mind indefinitely augmented in power and devoid of those limitations and imperfections it exhibits in him. Manifestly a contemplation of nature must be futile indeed which neglects to ponder over those ideas of power, wisdom, purpose, goodness and will, which are revealed to him in and by his own nature as he knows it to exist, and therefore as conceivably existing in a far higher form in that vast universe of being of which he is a self-conscious fragment.

some recapit

CHAPTER VII.

THE BRUTE.

"The highest psychical powers of animals resemble the lower psychical faculties of man. The brute is devoid of reason, and instinct is a peculiar function of the material organism, automatic and blind." IN the preceding chapter the nature of man, the rational Necessity of animal, could not be investigated without by imulation. plication, and indeed more or less directly, treating of the irrational creation considered in contrast with him. Here, where our purpose is to endeavour to gather what lesson we may from a consideration of the highest activities which brutes manifest, it will be necessary to reconsider some of the matters already treated of in our examination of the nature of man. Thus some recapitulation is unavoidable

save at the sacrifice of clearness and cogency.

The highest activities of irrational animals are those sensitive and emotional ones which constitute the functional exercise of their nervous system, and especially characteristic of animal nature is that form of nervous activity called "Instinct."

Instinct,

mode of

The question as to the true nature of "Instinct" is one which has been much discussed of late, and is studying it. considered by many persons to be peculiarly difficult. It is, in fact, attended with some peculiar difficulty, because not only are we unable to make brute psychosis a part of our own consciousness, but we are also debarred from learning it by any process similar to that which enables us to enter into the minds of our fellow-men-namely, rational speech. The instincts of