Page:The Native Races of the Pacific States, volume 2.djvu/37

Rh growth, which, like a spirit, walks abroad and mingles in the affairs of men. "All our progress," says Emerson, "is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct; then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root bud and fruit."

Under favorable conditions, and up to a certain point, stocks improve; by a law of natural selection the strongest and fittest survive, while the ill-favored and deformed perish; under conditions unfavorable to development, stocks remain stationary or deteriorate. Paradoxically, so far as we know, organs and organisms are no more perfect now than in the beginning; animal instincts are no keener, nor are their habitudes essentially changed. No one denies that stocks improve, for such improvement is perceptible and permanent; many deny that organisms improve, for if there be improvement it is imperceptible, and has thus far escaped proof. But, however this may be, it is palpable that the mind, and not the body, is the instrument and object of the progressional impulse.

Man in the duality of his nature is brought under two distinct dominions; materially he is subject to the laws that govern matter, mentally to the laws that govern mind; physiologically he is perfectly made and non-progressive, psychologically he is embryonic and progressive. Between these internal and external forces, between moral and material activities there may be, in some instances, an apparent antagonism. The mind may be developed in excess and to the detriment of the body, and the body may be developed in excess and to the detriment of the mind.

The animal man is a bundle of organs, with instincts implanted that set them in motion; man intellectual is a bundle of sentiments, with an implanted soul that keeps them effervescent; mankind in the mass, society,&mdash;we see the fermentations, we mark the transitions; is there, then, a soul in aggregated humanity as there is in individual humanity?

The instincts of man's animality teach the organs