d our comprehension." In the _Contemporary Review_, November,
1871,(43) Huxley speaks just as decidedly as Darwin in the name of
biology, "I really know nothing whatever, and never hope to know anything,
of the steps by which the passage from molecular movement to states of
consciousness is effected." Molecules and atoms are objects of knowledge.
If we ascribe knowledge to them, they immediately become the monads of
Leibnitz; you may evolve out of them what you have first involved into
them. Knowledge belongs to the Self alone, call it what we will. The
nerve-fibres might vibrate as often as they pleased, millions and millions
of times in a second; they would never produce the sensation of red if
there were no Self as the receiver and illuminator, the translator of
these vibrations of ether; this Self, that alone receives, alone
illumines, alone knows, and of which we can say nothing more than what the
Indian philosophers call _sak-kid-ananda_, that it exists, that it
perceives, and as they add, that it is blessed, _i.e._ that it is complete
in itself, serene and eternal.

If we take a firm stand on this living and perceiving Self (for _kid_ is
not so much thinking as perceiving, or knowing), there can then be no
question that it is present not only in men, but in animals as well; only
let us beware of the inference that what we mean by human mind, that is,
understanding and reasoning thought, is a necessary function of all living
organisms, and is possessed also by a goose or a chicken. It is just the
same with the perceiving Self as it is with the cell. To the eye they are
all alike. To express it figuratively, one cell has a ticket to Cologne,
another to Paris, a third to London. Each reaches its destination, and
then remains stationary, and no power on earth can make it advance beyond
the place to which it is ticketed, that is, its original destination, its
fundamental eternal idea. It is just the same with the perceiving Self. It
is true that the Self sees, hears, and thinks. As there are animals that
cannot see, that cannot hear, so there are animals--and this class includes
the whole of them--that cannot speak. It is true that the speaking animals,
that is men, have passed the former stations on a fast train; but they did
not leave the train, nor have they anything in common with those who
remained behind at previous stations, least of all can we consider them as
the offspring of those that remained behind. This is