CAUSES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 289

everything which lives and all that is devoid of life. Granting

that the universe may have had such a constitution that, upon

the occurrence of certain conditions, life (which previously

existed in potentid) should suddenly manifest itself, such a

possible process of evolution does not make it less the fact

that for all our experience no life arises save from what

already lives, and could never come to be save through some

adequate cause.

Secondly, there is the chasm between everything which

feels and all that is devoid of sensation. Everyone must

admit that this chasm exists everyone, that is, who is not

prepared to affirm that the pen he writes with and the ink he

uses are not both sentient existences.

For ourselves, we are profoundly convinced that we cause

no pang when we pluck an apple from a tree, and that we

may send grain to the mill with a perfectly good conscience.

But if the living world enables us to understand these

two great instances of discontinuity, that world, when we

include men within it, makes us aware of a chasm much

greater still : we mean the chasm which yawns between

every being capable of self-consciousness and a recognition

that some things are true and some actions laudable, and all

that is devoid of self-conscious life.

The laws which we have seen to be impressed, not only

upon mineral species, but also upon structure as known to us

in plants and animals, though they cannot be said to coincide

with the dictates of human reason, yet proclaim order as

innate in the world so far as it is known to us ; and law and

order are certainly akin to intelligence taken in the broadest

significance we can assign to it.

We have briefly considered certain facts concerning the

inorganic and organic worlds, but to form any satisfactory

conception of either, it is necessary to take into our consider-

ation, as we best may, the entire cosmos as one whole.

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everything which lives and all that is devoid of life. Granting

that the universe may have had such a constitution that, upon

the occurrence of certain conditions, life (which previously

existed in potentid) should suddenly manifest itself, such a

possible process of evolution does not make it less the fact

that for all our experience no life arises save from what

already lives, and could never come to be save through some

adequate cause.

Secondly, there is the chasm between everything which

feels and all that is devoid of sensation. Everyone must

admit that this chasm exists everyone, that is, who is not

prepared to affirm that the pen he writes with and the ink he

uses are not both sentient existences.

For ourselves, we are profoundly convinced that we cause

no pang when we pluck an apple from a tree, and that we

may send grain to the mill with a perfectly good conscience.

But if the living world enables us to understand these

two great instances of discontinuity, that world, when we

include men within it, makes us aware of a chasm much

greater still : we mean the chasm which yawns between

every being capable of self-consciousness and a recognition

that some things are true and some actions laudable, and all

that is devoid of self-conscious life.

The laws which we have seen to be impressed, not only

upon mineral species, but also upon structure as known to us

in plants and animals, though they cannot be said to coincide

with the dictates of human reason, yet proclaim order as

innate in the world so far as it is known to us ; and law and

order are certainly akin to intelligence taken in the broadest

significance we can assign to it.

We have briefly considered certain facts concerning the

inorganic and organic worlds, but to form any satisfactory

conception of either, it is necessary to take into our consider-

ation, as we best may, the entire cosmos as one whole.

u