terms I use freight no ideas to
you. They are sounds, rhythmic and musical, but they are not definite
symbols of thought. Their facts you do not grasp. For instance, the
prehensile organs of insects, the great toothed mandibles of the black
stag-beetle, the amorous din of the male cicada and the muteness of his
mate--these are facts which you cannot relate, one with the other, nor
can you generalise upon them. Let me add to these related characters,
and you cannot discern the law which is alike to all. What to you the
fluttering moth, decked in gold and crimson, brilliant, iridescent,
splendid? The beauty of it bids you bend to deity, otherwise it has no
worth; it is a stimulus to religion, and that is all. So with the
glowing incandescence of the stickleback and its polished scales of
silver. What make you of the hoarse voice of the gorilla? Is not the
dewlap of the ox inscrutable? the mane of the lion? the tusks of the
boar? the musk-sack of the deer? In the amethyst and sapphire of the
peacock's wing you find no rationality; to you it is a manifestation of
the wonder which is taboo. And so with the cock bird, displaying his
feathered ruffs and furbelows, dancing strange antics and spilling out
his heart in song.

I, on the other hand, dare to gather all these phenomena together, and
find out the common truth, the common fact, the common law, which is
generalisation, which is Science. I learn that there are two functions
which all life must perform: Nutrition and Reproduction. And I learn
that in all life, the performance, according to time and space and
degree, is very like. The slug must take to itself food, else it will
perish; and so I. The slug must procreate its kind, or its kind will
perish; and so I. The need being the same, the only difference is in the
expression. In all life come times and seasons when the individuals are
aware of dim yearnings and blind compulsions and masterful desires. The
senses are quickened and alert to the call of kind. And just as the fish
and the reptile glimmeringly adumbrate man, so do these yearnings and
desires adumbrate what man in himself calls "love," spelled all out in
capitals. I repeat, the need is the same. From the amoeba, up the ladder
of life to you and me, comes this passion of perpetuation. And in
yourself, refine and sublimate as you will, it is none the less blind,
unreasoning, and compelling.

And now we come to the point. In the development of life from low to