only a simile, and
should not provoke ridicule. Of course it will be said that those who can
journey to Cologne may go on to Paris, and once in Paris may easily cross
the Channel. We must not ride a comparison to death, but always adhere to
the facts. Why does not grass grow as high as a poplar, why is care taken,
as Goethe says, that no tree grows up to the sky? A strawberry might grow
as large as a cucumber or a pumpkin, but it does not. Who draws the line?
It is true, too, that along every line slight deviations take place right
and left. Nearly each year we hear of an abnormally large strawberry, and
no doubt abnormally small ones could be found as well. But in spite of
all, the normal remains. And whence comes it, if not from the same hand or
the same source which we compared with the ticket agent at the railway
station, in whom all who are familiar with the history of philosophy will
again readily recognise the Greek Logos?

These comparisons should at least be so far useful as to disclose the
confusion of thought, when, for instance, Mr. Romanes holds that it is not
only comprehensible, but the conclusion is unavoidable, that the human
mind has sprung from the minds of the higher quadrumana on the line of
natural genesis. The human mind may mean every possible thing; the
question therefore arises if he refers only to consciousness, or to
understanding and reason. In the second place the human mind is not
something subsisting by itself, but can only be the mind of an individual
man. We cannot be too careful in these discussions--otherwise we only end
by substituting bare abstractions for concrete things. We do not know the
human mind as anything concrete at all, only as an abstraction, and in
that case only as the mind of one man, or of many men. How can it then be
thought that my mind or the mind of Darwin sprang from the minds of the
higher quadrumana. We may say such things, but what meaning can we attach
to them? The same misconception exists here, if I am not mistaken, as in
the statement, that the human body springs from the bodies of the higher
quadrupeds--a misconception to which we have already referred. That has
absolutely no sense if we only hold firmly, that every organised body was
originally a cell, or originates in a cell, and that each cell, even in
its most complicated, manifold, and perfect form, always is, and remains,
an individual. It is useless therefore to talk of a descent of the human
mind