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Life: Its True Genesis by R. W. Wright
page 46 of 256 (17%)
between the spiritual and physical side of man, between dark brute sense
and "a soul as white as heaven." For going back to undifferentiated
primeval mist, and following down the whole line of vital phenomena, from
whatever subtle molecular combinations their first manifestation may have
arisen, until we reach the highest differentiated organism below man, we
shall find the chasm between the physical and the psychical not a
thousandth part spanned. And even if man, with the assistance of all the
maleficent spirits that "walk the air both when we wake and sleep," could
span this chasm, it would be only by another bridge of Mirza across which
no daring mortal could ever pass.

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles," thinks he has mastered the
necessary psychological, if not mechanical, engineering for the successful
construction of this bridge. In that branch of his work entitled the
"Principles of Psychology," he so far abandons the exact scientific method
as to take up psychical phenomena, and deal with them genetically, as he
would with the phenomenal manifestations of organic life, in the
continuous chain of ideas every where presented as consecutive thoughts in
the universe. He finds, or claims to find, in these psychical
manifestations, a constant tendency towards differentiation--towards
advanced and continuously advancing differences, varieties, and new modes
of thought--the same as, or similar to, those taking place in living
organisms. He accordingly assumes, for the science of mind, as complete a
foundation on which to base the doctrine of "evolution," as in the case of
either physical or physiological science. But he is no less troubled, in
this psychological realm, with divergent varieties, and exceptional
variations and changes, than when he plants himself on the more solid
substratum of life in the abounding realm of nature. His psychological
differentiations present too many and constantly-shifting divergencies and
re-divergences--exceptional branchings in one direction, and still more
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