indeterminate region, passes into the science of being; if we can call that a science of which the issue is nescience." Now, as we have seen, the whole physiognomy of nature is a series of expressions; and every expression is a form of language: all natural phenomena are, therefore, the expressions or language of life-physiognoinical appearances which result from antecedent changes of vital and psychic activities. To say that "the science of being ends in nescience" seems incorrect. As we have seen, all phenomena are expressions of thought; in other words, thoughtforms, manifestations of thought, the most positive aspect which in the terrene order it assumes. Mr. Spencer probably means to assert that thought is unknowable. And when Professor Max Müller speaks of the impossibility of thinking without words, he means that it is impossible to think a formless thought, which is obviously true, for it is impossible to think about nothing, thought being essentially a self-creative process, the source of its own existence, and of all the catena of expressions which it subsequently assumes through what we call matter. Thus, thought has knowledge of itself in precisely the same way that it has knowledge of all existence-i.e., in its attributes. Our thoughts know themselves by their forms; it is impossible to conceive of existence apart from the attribute of form; a thing is called formless when its shape is too vast in complexity for human definition-but that is the very opposite of absence of the attribute of shape. It is also impossible to distinguish between personality and thought; they are identical. Thought, then, Professor Max Müller means to say, has attributes; indeed, the attributes of all material existence are but the replica and counterpart of the attributes of thought. Mill has laid it down that "the ultimate laws of nature cannot possibly be less numerous than the distinguishable feelings or sensations of our nature." Thought is, therefore, related to itself as to all existence in its attributes; for if we say thought is related to existence and its attributes we contradict ourselves, for we assert that entity has existence independently of its attributes, and that

its attributes are non-existent; whereas, entity has no existence (for us) apart from its attributes, and cannot maintain its individuality if a single attribute be changed in the slightest degree. We are able to speak of a tree and its attributes, or of a thought and its attributes; yet tree or thought, apart from their attributes, are but undefined notions, resulting from the capacity of thought to generalize the particular, to unify multiplex attributes to the single notion of existence. But, to distinguish a tree from another entity, or one thought from another, we must resolve either into that special expression of abstract attributes which constitutes its individuality, individuality being that special modification of attributes by which any part of universal existence is at once related to and distinguished from all existence of its own kind directly, and indirectly from all existence whatever. Can thought, then, be said to be unknowable when it has attributes corresponding to those of all existence of which it gives us cognizance? And all we can know of any existence is by assimilating ourselves to consciousness of its attributes; and to this knowledge we can equally attain of thought.

Thought cannot exist, for example, apart from such attributes as form and extension. We can conceive of a world or a globule, but we cannot conceive of nothing, thought being a positive expression of which our organisms are the negative or potential side. If we picture a vacuum, our idea is of matter in a specific form and extent of separateness. How can thought be said to be less knowable than a tree, when we can express it, or rather its attributes, in written hieroglyphics, or spoken sounds, or direct symbolic representation as drawing or sculpture? Thus, in tracing the genesis of expression, we are conducted by inevitable sequence to thought, which is expression in the most positive and mobile form in which it has actual existence--i.e., existence knowable to itself; thought being selfevolved and self-perceived expression. We are now prepared to consider the apparently opposite opinions of Professor Max Müller and Mr. Galton, as to the constitution and modes of action of

the mind, and to show that the views of both are correct and reconcilable. Professor Max Müller holds tenaciously to the belief that all minds are radically alike in constitution; and Mr. Galton asserts that it is an absolute error to believe that the minds of every one else are like one's own, and that he at all events has no difficulty in thinking without words. To see how such contradictory opinions can both be correct and reconcilable, we must analyze the individuality of the mind, for minds vary as strikingly as faces, each of which, though built upon the same ground-plan and of the same elemental features, is a specialization of that plan, and each feature is again a specialization of the ground-plan of the feature, and thus we have interminable variety resulting from the same radical elements, and yet producing an interminable unity. But to understand the individuality of the mind, which, as Professor Max Müller contends, has no actual independent faculties, is not so easy as to understand that of the visible face, though the face is but the result, the materialized reflection of a corresponding potential mental individuality. Now if Professor Max Müller's view be correct, we must look for the individuality of the mind, in thoughtin each thought-and every thought being the offspring of the whole mind, must contain the whole individuality of the mind, part actually, the remainder potentially. To cease to think, as before remarked, is to cease to be actually (cogito ergo sum). It is possible to exist potentially without being self-conscious, as in sleep and in the embryonic state of being, but in such states our existence is known only to self-consciousness external to us. We are self-conscious then, only so long as thought is evolving itself through the alembic of the brain, and issuing into articulate actual being or expression through the brain, nerves, and ultimate organic processes of the body. So, when we speak, it is not our voice which is operating through us, but our thought-i.e., our entire consciousness assimilated to some special thought-form through some special part of the brain, evolving through intermediate organic processes and issuing in ultimate expression through the

vocal apparatus. And as every feature and bodily organ is a specialized expression of the physical individuality-so that we say a person's nose, or eye, or mouth is characteristic of them-so are the psychic activities whose recurrent operation has moulded these features and given them their character, equally expressive of all the activities- the total energies of the ego. So that a person's individuality or character is expressed in his look, or gait, or voice; all his psychic potentialities are indirectly in a state of actual expression through the one organic process which is supremely active. All the capacities are in a state of co-operant and co-ordinate alignment to the one which is supremely active, in a perfect and harmonious scale of degrees of relatively subordinate activity

Here we see the consistency between the opinions of Professor Max Müller and Mr. Galton. and Mr. Galton. The mind has no distinct positive faculties, only potential capacities; but it will necessarily express itself most perfectly through the medium of those organic processes which are most highly developed, in other words, through those organic channels which, having expressed itself through most frequently in the subject and his progenitors, have become the most easy media by which it can evolve itself to the most perfect expression or state of actual being. For example, a blind man cannot express himself in a glance, though he may be able to do so in a very pronounced manner through his voice; and a dumb man cannot express himself through his voice, though he may be able to do so eloquently through his eyes or by gestures. But in the expression of the dumb man's look there is something wanting, which indicates his deficiency of vocal power, if we had the discernment to recognize it; and in the voice of the blind man his sensory deficiency is indicated if our perceptions were sufficiently delicate to distinguish the absence of expression. Thus the whole is perfect in proportion to its parts, and each part in proportion to every part. A blind man can acquire knowledge of his own physical conformation; but an idiot, however perfect the apparatus of sight, cannot see himself. We are conscious how we

are looking at any particular time, by how we are feeling subjectively. How then is it possible to deny that thought is the basis of sight as of all definite sensation? Professor Max Müller would doubtless admit that a man who has learned a single word and its meaning, has modified and enlarged his individuality to some extent, for he has acquired the capacity, which he did not possess before, to handle in the abstract some conception, in a form in which he could not handle it before. If, for example, he has been told that a certain object is a ship, instead of conceiving the ship he can think of the phonetic substitute, and if he has learned to read the word "ship," he can conceive the four hieroglyphics which stand for it. Yet, says Professor Max Müller, one man's mind is not different from another's, though if he were to use the word "thaumaturgic" in addressing one audience every member would understand him, while if he used it to another not one would know what he meant. And if we use the word fear to an individual like Lord Nelson, who said he knew not what fear was, it has no more meaning relative to such a person than the word "stone ;" while to others, who can experience the emotion, it is indissolubly associated with a specific state of consciousness. Now there might be a language invented in which the word "stone" might be made to signify the conscious state called "fear," and the word "fear" to signify the concrete substance that we call "stone," both words being arbitrary humanly invented symbols directly related to the intellect only, because the intellect immediately evolved them; yet, though they were coined by the intellectual faculties, because the consciousness which evolved them issued into being, or took ultimate shape, through those capacities, upon analysis we shall find that they contain within them the potentialities of the entire human consciousness, simply because any and every expression is indirectly related to all expression, which fact makes human language possible of illimitable development. We use the words "fear" and "stone," but before the mind can understand them it must resolve them into conceptions of the

abstract attributes of the things for which they stand. I say, of the things, but only the word "stone" stands for a thing, the other represents an abstract state.

This brings us to a crucial point of the problem-viz., the difference between things and persons. We shall further see that each human self-consciousness is a more or less intense expression or focussed reflection of a universal self-consciousness; and that each actual expression of a human self-consciousness-whether the expression be what we call sight, hearing, taste, smell, speech, love, hatred, anger, hope, fear, or any other state of consciousness is a directly specialized form or individualization of the total self-consciousness which expresses it, and indirectly of the universal self-consciousness of which the human is a miniature individualization or expression. And now to show how far this seems an inevitable induction, and that every thought as it issues into being is the universe in abstract miniature, and that every human being is in the most literal sense a microcosm, and "the temple of the living God," and materiality itself an aspect or expression of thought.

Victor Hugo speaks of "The reduction of the universe to an individual" in describing love; and Descartes says "that to conceive quite clearly is to possess.' If by mutual arrangement people might use the word "fear" for "stone" and "stone" for "fear," each of these words (which, as before remarked, are directly intellectual in origin and relation), must contain within them indirectly the potentialities of the entire conscious capacities of the human mind, otherwise they could not be reversible and made capable of identical significance, so that, by a paradox, the truth of which the intellect reaches through its capacity for endless comparison, anything can be made to indirectly express everything, and everything anything; the phenomena of existence being an interminable circle of expressions, at any point of which circle such expressions may with equal truth be said to begin and terminate; but capable of widening farther and farther into an interminable infinitude, the most ultimate zone of which is but

an indirect individualization of the most central, and en rapport with it. How do we understand the words "stone" and "fear"? To have knowledge of the individuality of a stone, we must be able to assimilate our self consciousness to certain expressions which are the counterparts of certain expressions or characters of the stone.

Now the expressions or characters which give the stone its distinctive nature are abstract attributes; change any one of them, and you change the individuality of the stone. And what are attributes of the stone but capacities to affect or modify in a specific manner certain capacities in us-i.e., to assimilate our central consciousness (thought) through the medium of its specialized radiations or organic points. of assimilation (the external senses) to special shapes or expressions corresponding to such attributes, and which constitute our only attainable knowledge of the objective entity we call a stone. The external senses are therefore media through which the subjective self-consciousness, which is directly en rapport with its own materialism, is placed indirectly en rapport with all material existence, and attains to knowledge of it through consciousness of its attributes; which shows that what we call objective existence is but an indirectly subjective, and what we call sub jective an indirectly objective. Our knowledge of objective existence is, therefore, a specific state or relation of our subjective consciousness. Sight is but an exquisite form of tactility, by which the subjective ego touches certain aspects of the attributes of entity external to it, so that the objective is an indirectly continuous expression of the subjective and the subjective of the objective, and they are placed in a state of incessant reaction, each involving and evolving itself through the other, and, in doing so, differentiating them selves to new shades of expression. This is why we cannot distinguish between thoughts and words: the exterior surface of a man's body is as much himself as the most central molecule; and if one could translate a thought into a million languages, the last would be as much a continuation, or ultimate expression or individualization of the

thought as the first. It is impossible to separate the idea of quality from that of existence; an adjective has no meaning in itself. Nor is it possible to describe the most concrete object except in abstract terms, which implies that it must be resolved into thought-forms before we can reproduce it in wordforms indirectly comprehensible to our own and other minds. So that abstractness and concreteness are but the extreme degrees of a single circle, at which these positive and negative aspects of matter converge, and enable it to react upon itself. All matter has consequently its abstract point at which it is assimilatable more or less directly to the highest abstract form known to us-viz., thought.

The real explanation of this puzzle of minds being alike and yet different, is that every human mind is a microcosm through which the All-self-consciousness reflects itself, a medium through which the abstract side of the universe is refracted and its character differentiated while its identity is retained. When we say "I," we mean nature as expressed through our own organism. To a mind incapable of experiencing the emotion of fear, the word fear would have no more personal meaning than the word stone, no matter how great the intellectual capacities of such a mind. Again, such a person could not form conceptions (mental images) of those expressions which are the natural language of fear any more easily than of the hieroglyphics which make the word, or than conceptions of stones, while, when endowed with the capacity to subjectively experience the emotion of fear, the mind spontaneously and involuntarily forms ideas of such expressions (sensation pictures), or of those which are the natural language of any other emotion which it has the capacity to experience. But human ideas do not involuntarily take the form of the intellectually invented symbols which we employ to express such states; no one instinctively thinks in such expressions as the words fear, terror, or panic, in the same sense in which he instinctively thinks in those expressions which are the natural language of fear; they have to be acquired by voluntary effort, and then become

inseparably linked with the emotional states of consciousness which they are used to express. There are men unable to read who would not know the meaning of hideous, who could nevertheless form very intense ideas of the terrible, and recognize the faintest gleam of the natural expression of fear in a human countenance. We see, therefore, that our capacity to read intuitively those expressions which are the cardinal language of nature, will be proportionate to our capacity to assimilate ourselves (and we cannot assimilate ourselves mentally and not physically) to counterparts of such expressions. A person entirely destitute of the capacity to express fear instinctively, would be incapable of reading its natural expressions, more easily than the words which stand for them: his intellect would have to voluntarily learn their significance. Yet the capacity to evolve intellectual language must be intuitive, or alphabets and language would never never have been invented. Words have therefore a wider or narrower meaning according to the scope of the mind from which they proceed, or which re-assimilates them. A word is nucleated personality embodied in "matter-moulded" characters; it is an embryonic centre of assimilation which, evolved through a human mind, acquires personality in the attributes of the entity or modicum of entity for which it stands. The capacity for ultra or super-instinctive language which is the impassable barrier separating man from the lower animals, is a capacity for illimitable expression and therefore for illimitable advancement.

66

The Mosaic account of creation tells us that The Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them," etc. This statement is exactly in harmony with the capacity which man alone of all terrene beings possesses, to evolve from himself expressions ad infinitum with which to designate and distinguish objective phenomena. Further, though the power of the human mind to invent arbitrary symbols for natural phenomena is clearly limitless, such symbols have no meaning apart from the cardinal natural expressions to which they

bear reference. Natural expressions are therefore at once the basis and object of language, its source and its raison d'être; neither can thought assume expressions higher than those of nature. If the poet, artist, or sculptor describes angels or the Deity, his symbols are a transcendent anthropomorphism. This illustrates the truth of Professor Max Müller's opinion, that all minds are constituted on the same radical plan, and recalls again the Scripture, "God created man in His own image:" for the human individuality is the highest image thought is capable of assuming. The artist may arise who will portray forms more God like than any yet evolved by the human mind, but such forms will be but more exquisite and perfect expressions of the human form divine; the scale of idealization may have no limit; but the radical type will always be the human.

If we could know the genesis of a single word we should have penetrated the origin of thought, and therefore of all being; we should know the beginning and end of self; "we should know what God and man is."

If ideas did not terminate in sensations they could not recognize themselves, or be recognized by other objective selves; it is thus that the ego is at once subjective and objective to itself. Self-consciousness is a self-evolved circle, beginning in the idea and expanding until it expresses itself through the senses in such form as to become sensually objective to itself, and by a centripetal or return process reacting upon the self, to be re-evolved from the centre, expanding through it in the form. of another idea, so that we can translate through ourselves one idea into any number of symbols or languages, every one of which is an individualization of the same primitive thoughtform. This truth must have been haunting the mind of Descartes, when he asked "where a thought is lodged in its author." Milton makes Raphael say, when discoursing with Adam, "One Almighty is, from whom all things proceed and up to Him return." Our self-conscious existence, as it emanates from moment to moment, is a perpetual evolving and involving-a flowing in and a flowing out