Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 24, 1870 (IA b22307643).pdf/39

 processes the perception of sense graduated towards the higher forms of intelligence cannot now be discerned; but when mind began to exercise its prerogative of subduing the earth, it obviously brought the subject of it under a new law of existence. The out- ward agencies which in the beginning had co-operated to produce mechanical results upon our frame, were now opposed and hin- dered by the operations of mind, and the equilibrium of our physical condition was maintained in spite of circumstances the most variable. Art controlling nature is but a partial expression of the law of man's ex- istence; but even this separates him from creatures next to him by what I have said is an immeasurable and impassable gulf-im- measurable, because there is no known increment which could multiply knowledge according to sense into knowledge according to reason; impassable, because in the on- ward course of nature those primeval condi- tions which have culminated in man cannot be supposed ever to recur. Though, there- D