Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/72

62 of the fittest." But lie frankly admits that "kindred objections may be urged against the expression" to which this leading led him. The first of these words in a vague way, and the second word in a clear way, call up an idea which he must admit to be "anthropocentric." What an embarrassment it is that the human mind can not wholly turn the back upon itself! Self evisceration, the happy dispatch of the Japanese, is not impossible or even difficult, although when it is done the man does not expect to continue in life. But self-evisceration by the intellectual faculties is a much more arduous operation, especially when we expect to go on thinking and defining as before. It is conceivable that a man might live at least for a time without his viscera, but it is not conceivable that a mind should reason with only some bit or fragment of the brain. In the mysterious convolutions of that mysterious substance there are, as it were, a thousand retinæ—set to receive its own special impressions from the external world. They are all needed; but they are not all of equal dignity. Some catch the lesser and others catch the higher lights of nature; some reflect mere numerical order or mechanical arrangement, while others are occupied with the causes and the reasons and the purposes of these. Some philosophers make it their business to blindfold the facets which are sensitive to such higher things, and to open those only which are adapted to see the lower. And yet these very men generally admit that the faculties of vision which see the higher relations are peculiarly human. They are so identified with the human intellect that they can hardly be separated. And hence they are called anthropomorphic, or as Mr. Spencer prefers to call them "anthropocentric." This close association—this characteristic union—is the very thing which Mr. Spencer dislikes. Yet the earnest endeavors of Mr. Spencer to get out of himself—to eliminate every conception which is "anthropocentric"—have very naturally come to grief. "Survival"? Does not this word derive its meaning from our own conceptions of life and death? Away with it, then! What has a true philosopher to do with such conceptions? Why will they intrude their noxious presence into the purified ideas of a mind seeking to be freed from all anthropocentric contamination? And then that other word "fittest," does it not still more clearly belong to the rejected concepts? Does it not smell of the analogies derived from the mortified and discarded members of intelligence and of will? Does it not suggest such notions as a key fitting a lock, or a glove fitting a hand, and is it worthy of the glorified vision we may enjoy of Nature to think of her correlations as having any analogy with adjustments such as these? In the face of the innumerable and complicated