The eddy, the ripple, the wave, the current, are accidental forms through which the originally imparted force is displayed. They are all expending power. Their life, if such a term can be used, is not the property of themselves, but of the ocean to which they belong.
and on organic nature.Influences which thus metaphorically give life to the sea, in reality give life to the land. Under their genial operation a wave of verdure spreads over the earth, and countless myriads of animated things attend it, each like the eddies and ripples of the sea, expending its share of the imparted force. The life of these accidental forms, through which power is being transposed, belongs, not to itself, but to the universe of which it is a part.
Nature of animals.Of the waves upon the ocean there may not be two alike. The winds, the shores, their mutual [363] interferences, a hundred extraneous influences, mould them into their ephemeral shapes. So those collections of matter of which animated things consist offer a plastic substance to be modified. The number of individuals counts like the ripples of the sea.
They constitute a series.As external circumstances change, animated forms change with them, and thus arises a series of which the members stand in a connected relation. The affiliated sequence of the external circumstances is represented in the affiliated succession of living types. From parts, or from things already existing, new parts and new things emerge, the new not being added or juxtaposed to the old, but evolved or developed from it. From the homogeneous or general, the heterogeneous or special is brought forth. A new member, fashioned in secrecy and apart, is never abruptly ingrafted on any living thing. New animal types have never been suddenly located among old ones, but have emerged from them by process of transmutation. As certainly as that every living thing must die, so must it reach perfection by passing through a succession of subordinate forms. An individual, or even a species, is only a zoological phase in a passage to something beyond. An instantaneous adult, like an immortal animal, is a physiological impossibility.
The doctrine of progressive improvement.This bringing forth of structure from structure, of function from function, incidentally presents, upon the whole, an appearance of progressive improvement, and for such it has been not unfrequently mistaken. Thus if the lowest animals, which move by reflex action instantly but unconsciously, when an impression is made upon them, be compared with the higher ones, whose motions are executed under the influence of antecedent impressions, and are therefore controlled by ideas, there seems to have been such an improvement. Still, however, it is altogether of a physical kind. Every impression of which the dog or elephant is conscious implies change in the nerve centres, and these changes are at the basis of the memory displayed by those animals. Our own experience furnishes many illustrations. When we gaze steadfastly on some brightly-illuminated object, and then close or turn aside our eyes, a fading [364] impression of the object at which we have been looking still remains; or, when a spark is made to revolve rapidly, we think we see a circle of fire, the impression upon the retina lasting until the spark has completed its revolution. In like manner, though far more perfectly, are impressions registered or stored up in the sensory ganglia, the phantoms of realities that have once been seen. In those organs countless images may thus be superposed.
Analogies between animals and man.Man agrees with animals thus approaching him in anatomical construction in many important respects. He, too, represents a continuous succession of matter, a continuous expenditure of power. Impressions of external things are concealed in his sensory ganglia, to be presented for inspection in subsequent times, and to constitute motives of action. But he differs from them in this, that what was preparatory and rudimentary in them is complete and perfect in him. From the instrument of instinct there has been developed an instrument of intellection. In the most perfect quadrupeds, an external stimulus is required to start a train of thought, which then moves on in a determinate way, their actions indicating that, under the circumstances, they reason according to the same rules as man, drawing conclusions more or less correct from the facts offered to their notice. But, the instrument of intellection completed, it is quickly brought into use, and now results of the highest order appear. The succession of ideas is under control; new trains can be originated not only by external causes, but also by an interior, a spontaneous influence. The passive has become active. Animals remember, man alone recollects. Every thing demonstrates that the development and completion of this instrument of intellection has been followed by the super-addition of an agent or principle that can use it.
Points of distinction between them.There is, then, a difference between the brutes and man, not only as respects constitution, but also as respects destiny. Their active force merges into other mundane forces and disappears, but the special principle given to him endures. We willingly persuade ourselves that this principle is actually personified, and that the shades of the dead resemble [365] their living forms. To Eastern Asia, where philosophy has been accustomed to the abstract idea of force, the pleasures we derive from this contemplation are denied, the cheerless doctrine of Buddhism likening the life of man to the burning of a lamp, and death to its extinction. Perceiving in the mutation of things, as seen in the narrow range of human vision, a suggestion of the variations and distribution of power throughout nature, it rises to a grand, and, it must be added, an awful conception of the universe.
But Europe, and also the Mohammedan nations of Asia, have not received with approbation that view. The human soul. To them there is an individualized impersonation of the soul, and an expectation of its life hereafter. The animal fabric is only an instrument for its use. The eye is the window through which that mysterious principle perceives: through the ear are brought to its attention articulate sounds and harmonies; by the other organs the sensible qualities of bodies are made known. From the silent chambers and winding labyrinths of the brain the veiled enchantress looks forth on the outer world, and holds the subservient body in an irresistible spell.
Extension of these views to the nature of the world.This difference between the Oriental and European ideas respecting the nature of man reappears in their ideas respecting the nature of the world. The one sees in it only a gigantic engine, in which stars and orbs are diffusing power and running through predestined mutations. The other, with better philosophy and a higher science, asserts a personal God, who considers and orders events in a vast panorama before him.