they ought long ago to have been considered as proof sufficient that no organized being could ever have been called into existence by another agency than the direct intervention of a reflective mind. It is in a measure conceivable that physical agents might produce something like the body of the lowest kinds of animals or plants, and that under identical circumstances the same thing may have been produced again and again, by the repetition of the same process; but that upon closer analysis of the possibilities of the case, it should not have at once appeared how incongruous the further supposition is, that such agencies could delegate the power of reproducing what they had just called into existence, to those very beings, with such limitations that they could never reproduce anything but themselves, I am at a loss to understand. It will no more do to suppose that from simpler structures such a process may end in the production of the most perfect, as every step implies an addition of possibilities not even included in the original case. Such a delegation of power can only be an act of intelligence; while between the production of an indefinite number of organized beings, as the result of a physical law, and the reproduction of these same organized beings by themselves, there is no necessary connection. The successive generations of any animal or plant cannot stand, as far as their origin is concerned, in any causal relation to physical agents, if these agents have not the power of delegating their own action to the full extent to which they have already been productive in the first appearance of these beings; for it is a physical law that the resultant is equal to the forces applied. If any new being has ever been produced by such agencies, how could the successive generations enter, at the time of their birth, into the same relations to these agents, as their ancestors, if these beings had not in themselves the faculty of sustaining their character, in spite of these agents? Why, again, should animals and plants at once begin to decompose under the very influence of all those agents which have been subservient to the maintenance of their life, as soon as life ceases, if life is limited or determined by them?

There exist between individuals of the same species relations far more complicated than those already alluded to, which go still further to disprove any possibility of causal dependence of organized beings upon physical agents. The relations upon which the maintenance of species is based, throughout the animal king

dom, in the universal antagonism of sex, and the infinite diversity of these connections in different types, have really nothing to do with external conditions of existence; they indicate only relations of individuals to individuals, beyond their connections with the material world in which they live. How, then, could these relations be the result of physical causes, when physical agents are known to have a specific sphere of action, in no way bearing upon this sphere of phenomena ?

For the most part, the relations of individuals to individuals are unquestionably of an organic nature, and, as such, have to be viewed in the same light as any other structural feature; but there is much, also, in these connections that partakes of a psychological character, taking this expression in the widest sense of the word.

When animals fight with one another, when they associate for a common purpose, when they warn one another in danger, when they come to the rescue of one another, when they display pain or joy, they manifest impulses of the same kind as are considered among the moral attributes of man. The range of their passions is even as extensive as that of the human mind, and I am at a loss to perceive a difference of kind between them, however much they may differ in degree and in the manner in which they are expressed. The gradations of the moral faculties among the higher animals and man are, moreover, so imperceptible, that to deny to the first a certain sense of responsibility and consciousness would certainly be an exaggeration of the difference between animals and man. There exists, besides, as much individuality, within their respective capabilities, among animals as among men, as every sportsman, or every keeper of menageries, or every farmer and shepherd can testify who has had a large experience with wild, or tamed, or domesticated animals.

This argues strongly in favor of the existence in every animal of an immaterial principle similar to that which, by its excellence and superior endowments, places man so much above animals. Yet the principle exists unquestionably, and whether it be called soul, reason, or instinct, it presents in the whole range of organized beings a series of phenomena closely linked together; and upon it are based not only the higher manifestations of the mind, but the very permanence of the specific differences which characterize every organism. Most of the arguments of philosophy

in favor of the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other living beings. May I not add that a future life, in which man should be deprived of that great source of enjoyment and intellectual and moral improvement which result from the contemplation of the harmonies of an organic world, would involve a lamentable loss, and may we not look to a spiritual concert of the combined worlds and all their inhabitants in presence of their Creator as the highest conception of Paradise?

Section XVII of essays on "Classification," complete.

MUTUAL DEPENDENCE OF THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE KINGDOMS

HOUGH it had long been known, by the experiments of De Saussure, that the breathing processes of animals and plants are very different, and that while the former inhale atmospheric air, and exhale carbonic acid gas, the latter appropriate carbon and exhale oxygen, it was not until Dumas and Bousingault called particularly the attention of naturalists to the subject, that it was fully understood how direct the dependence is of the animal and vegetable kingdoms one upon the other, in that respect, or rather how the one consumes what the other produces, and vice versa, thus tending to keep the balance which either of them would singly disturb to a certain degree. The common agricultural practice of manuring exhibits from another side the dependence of one kingdom upon the other: the undigested particles of the food of animals return to the ground, to fertilize it for fresh production. Again, the whole animal kingdom is either directly or indirectly dependent upon the vegetable kingdom for its sustenance, as the herbivorous animals afford the needful food for the carnivorous tribes. We are too far from the time when it could be supposed that worms originated in the decay of fruits and other vegetable substances, to need here repetition of what is known respecting the reproduction of these animals. Nor can it be necessary to show how preposterous the assumption would be that physical agents produced plants first, in order that from these, animals might spring forth. Who could have taught the physical agents to make the whole animal world dependent upon the vegetable kingdom?

On the contrary, such general facts as those above alluded to show, more directly than any amount of special disconnected facts could do, the establishment of a well-regulated order of things, considered in advance; for they exhibit well-balanced conditions of existence, prepared long beforehand, such as only an intelligent being could ordain.

Section XXIX of essays on "Classification," complete.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

(1799-1888)

MOS BRONSON ALCOTT, one of the founders of the celebrated "Concord School of Philosophy," was the son of a Connecticut farmer of limited means. He was born in 1799, and a part of his extensive though irregular educational training was a journey through Virginia made as a peddler. Returning to New England, he taught school in Boston, and afterwards settled at Concord to engage in the philosophical studies which did so much to make that village famous. In 1842 he visited England, bringing back with him on his return Charles Lane and H. G. Wright, with whom he founded an unsuccessful ideal community near Harvard, Massachusetts. After its failure, he delivered lectures and held « conversations" on a range of subjects "extending from divinity to cookery." Among his published works are "Concord Days," "Orphic Sayings," and "Table-Talk." The essays of "Concord Days," if they show sometimes those intellectual peculiarities he took no pains to conceal, show also that he had thought as deeply on many things as the greatest thinkers of his day, and that his thought was often not mere literary reflection, but the compulsory conclusions of his own deep experience. He died in 1888. One of his most attractive "hobbies," his love of children and his belief in their nearness to God, seems to be related in equal measure to the theories of Froebel and to the Scriptural suggestion that the mind of childhood must be retained or regained by all who wish to take hold on truth.

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THE AGE OF IRON AND BRONZE

URS can hardly claim to be the Golden Age, but of Bronze and Iron rather. If ideas are in the ascendant, still mind is fettered by mechanism. We scale the heavens to grade the spaces. Messrs. Capital & Co. transact our business for us the globe over. Was it in the Empire News that I read the company's advertisement for supplying mankind with gas at a penny per diem annually? And then, proceeding to say, "that considering the old-time monopoly in the heavenly luminary, the