love; and He says to me in them: "Look, My child, and tell Me what I am doing; 'tis painful to you at first, but you will love it when you see it." By faith I see it even now, My Father; and love it though unseen because Thou doest it. Blind and ignorant children that we have been, that we would not look to see what our Father does, but turned away our eyes, calling it ugliness and evil because it affects us painfully. Yet is this ideal Art right, as a step; nor is this vain attempt to rise by our own ideal up to God, really in vain. Sad indeed would be a phenomenal Art, or Science, or Poetry, if it had not first been hallowed by the upward flight towards the throne of God. Once having learnt to see that the ideal is in truth divine, Science, Art, Poetry can descend safely to identify it with phenomena wherein the stamp of divinity seems almost lost; once having soared the soul will soar again. Therefore the false ideal precedes the true. God's is too large for us at first; uninstructed by the teaching of the fancy we should never comprehend the glory of reality; as a child is taught by toys to deal with the reality of life.

It is God's voice and not man's that I want to hear in Music; and in Science too, and in Society; and in all human works indeed; for in all this best knowledge is to be attained. All man's works may and shall express this higher meaning-even human life. We try to put society right, to carry out our own ideas; so long as we do this we shall certainly put it wrong, but, thank God, it will be vitally wrong; and in the end it shall express a meaning beyond any thought or design of man, or possible to man; an idea written there by God; accomplished not by our efforts, but in spite of them, although by them only rendered possible.

III.

MENTAL PHYSIOLOGY.

Moral and emotional facts stand on the same basis as physical facts -False perceptions are the condition of mental life-Nature is always first misunderstood-There is no method for discovery— The relation of logic to imagination-The place of those who want logic-The significance of paradox-Sleep in mental life-Breathing in mental life-Genius and talent-Talent is nutrition, genius function-Man's mind is female, woman's male-How genius and talent are affected by paradox-Genius is common sense- -Mental life arises from failure-Men are parts of a whole-May genius be found common?—In humanity, as in genius, there is no design— Nutrition and function are the life in thinking-Submission to the thought of others is disease-Saying is seeing-The mental life of humanity.

WE perceive not only physical facts, but moral, emotional, intellectual facts. These moral facts are as much external to ourselves as the physical; and they nourish, constitute, are food of, our emotional and intellectual life, just as the physical facts are of our scientific life. This is important to observe; because though our entire mental life depends upon observation of physical facts, yet these physical facts are not only physical, they are intellectual, emotional and moral, as much as physical. For instance, when I perceive a person fall in the street, I perceive a physical fact illustrating gravity; but I also perceive an emotional fact, a fellowcreature injured; a moral fact, a call for my assistance; an intellectual fact, or process of thought and motion.

And these emotional, moral, intellectual elements are as truly in the fact I see as the physical ones. I no more create them than the other, indeed perhaps even less; doubtless the physical elements, those which involve space, time, and matter, are much more dependent upon my perception than the others. Thus each psychical fact is threefold, physical, intellectual, moral; nourishing our threefold mental life.

Our emotional life is only one form of the emotional life of the universe. And observe that our minds must be nourished with emotional elements in wrong or organic relations. The entire process of nutrition and function exists here also, and will reveal itself to patient thought. Thus an emotional organization is produced, so that perception of " physical facts" sets up long trains of feeling. It is psychical facts that we perceive in nature. But the question returns, whence and how come those physical forms of thought, space and time and matter? I know what is wrong; I have a nutritive view of the question; I put the phenomenon before the fact, effect before cause; this it is that perplexes me.

It may be objected to the statement of our perceiving emotional and intellective facts in nature, that we only perceive these by virtue of our own consciousness, because by our own experience we have learnt that they must be there. When we see a person fall we do not perceive a sentient being in suffering, but know from our own experience that it must be so. Now this helps

me to the very fact I have been wanting. I grant that our perception of emotional facts in nature is based upon our own experience; but this statement is equally true of all our perceptions, of physical as of emotional. We can perceive nothing but that which is homogeneous with what we have experienced. The foundation of all

that we perceive lies in what we feel; here is the foundation of our perception of space, time, matter. Let a man once perceive a new idea, excite him in a new emotion, and from that time he sees everything new. What he sees depends on what he is himself. A child perceives no "things" in the facts of nature until by his own consciousness he has obtained the idea of himself, of his body as a thing, or occupying space, as being solid; nor of time, until he has experienced in himself the lapse of time. So he perceives in the facts of nature no ideas, no emotions, until he has conceived ideas and felt emotions himself. Thus the facts of nature constitute our minds and yet are independent of what we perceive in them. The "things" bear the same relations to the reality as the ideas and emotions do; they are all, as perceived by us, self-derived, and yet true.

Our solemn conviction of a real universe around us would really be almost laughable if it were not so glorious; this wrong relation of our ideas is our nutrition, the very fact and basis of our mental life. It is, in fact, because of this wrong perception that we have a mental life at all. I am truly overwhelmed with the grandeur and solemnity of this thought; our perception of a world external to ourselves is the source of our mental life, the stimulus of all our mental activity; in one word, it is our mental nutrition from first to last. All our mental life comes from observation of Nature. Consider how useless it would have been for all purposes of mental life for us to have perceived Nature as being merely a passion in ourselves; or, if instead of seeing the sun moving we had directly perceived that we were being carried round it.

In this necessity of our perceiving passion in ourselves

as external, I conceive I approach to a solution of the question as to the sense in which our mental life is maintained by organic or wrongly arranged materials; to seeing how the elements are in themselves organically arranged. Until the illusion of a real external world had had its full nutritive operation upon us, it could not be done away with. Berkeley and other spiritualists attacked it in vain; its work was not done. And now, if so be it is overthrown, Nature has another sort of work to do for us, not less but more. The illusory motion of the sun was the life of astronomy up to a certain point, but when that was seen aright, there were other nutritive errors in astronomy, and it advanced faster than ever. So when we see matter aright as a passion in ourselves, there will be other nutrition from Nature, and Science will advance faster than ever; for each function is a nutrition. And see how the nutritive elements of each former period are cast off, excreted, when they have performed their function and become decomposed or disintegrated; with what contempt we look back upon the idea of the sun really moving round the earth (though not upon the men who believed it); so shall we be before long upon the idea of real matter.

I see, too, that books presenting new truths, must be first misunderstood; men must be so as well as Nature; this is nutrition; there can be no function without it. All new facts of observation must be first organically arranged; it is the very law of life. Perhaps we may say he never really understands a fact or truth who has not first misunderstood it. A new truth is presented by a book just as by Nature, and will certainly, by all who really perceive it, be organically perceived, although the rectification or function may immediately ensue: the new,