For the benefit of those who do not quite see this, and who think that things may be one day cleared up, on this one spot, it cannot be too definitively stated what a human intellect is at the utmost, and within what limits its activity lies.
This intellect is a mere organic tool. It can only operate on efficient causes, which here mean the moving functions of a universal machine in full activity already. It can see, hear, taste, smell, and touch; it can set the results of sensation in order, and observe them as a whole, and choose a line of action coincident with them. It is a mere instrument for effecting these ends.
This is the whole story of Nature. She reveals herself as a function, acting continuously before senses which are mirrors; and here lies the absolute limit. She reveals her Efficient Causes without affording the remotest glimpse of her Predisposing Causes.
L.
All know how tired the patrician gets of perpetual country life; and in that one respect I was a patrician. I had seen the things most worth seeing in the leading towns of Europe in my early days; and had a longing to witness how forty or fifty millions of people got on in the new country of Canada and the United States. I had a fancy to see Quebec. I had a grandfather who was on the staff of General Wolfe, and who saw him die. I had a great-grandfather, also a British officer, father of the above, one David Gordon, of Park, who was on duty at Halifax and there met his death and burial. Not that I would cross the waves on these accounts; I simply wanted change, so sought it in New-idea-land, U.S. I went to Philadelphia, thence to Columbus and Galena; from Galena round about, crossing the Mississippi on foot over its admirable winter pavement when boats change places with sledges. Then I went to Boston, thence to Quebec; from Quebec to New York, not to mention all the stoppages at intervening places; from New York, after not a few circumgyrations, I found my way back to London again.
I saw a large portion of the New World; it proved to be exactly what a hundred people had described already, and I do not care to add my account, only to make up a hundred and one American nights entertainments.
My ghost of travel not being yet laid, I took to the waves again and sojourned for a while at Jersey, where I had relatives and friends. At length I settled down in Grosvenor Street, Park Lane; when I was invited to take charge of the Earl of Ripon’s health at his villa on Putney Heath. After a lapse of time, I took a small house in Spring Gardens; later on, I built myself a villa on three acres of park land at Roehampton; then, still later on, I lived for some years at Parson’s Green, Fulham; and after some more movements, in separate years, now to Florence, now to German-Saxony, now to Venice and Rome, which last visit was eighteen years ago, I am settled, perhaps for good, in St. John’s Wood, where I am within an easy distance of Highgate Cemetery; so I hope a one-horse coach will end my journeys.
On looking for the moss I have gathered I find its quantity very small.