Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/381

THE OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE. 369 of Nature. Immediately upon such functional change, by dint of its own indwelling and scientifically intelligible powers, the experiencing subject restores itself to full inte- grity. Promptly it is ready again as an identical being re- plenished in its all-endowed wholeness to re-encounter any fresh experiential incident that may accrue to it. And, at last, when it comes to be worn by the irruption of more phenomenal change than it can restoratively overcome, then it relinquishes for a while functional brain-activity, reconsti- tuting itself out-and-out by means of the prolonged process of organic renovation which we call sleep. This, indeed, is the veritable, the naturally manifest time- conquering, change-compensating power in us ; a power kept efficient only by the incessant toil of ever identically rein- tegrating vitality, and not by the figment of changeless sub- sistence in some secure recess of spiritual transcendence. Is, then, the free play of unverifiably inventive fancy more venerable than the plodding assiduity of trustfully labouring actuality '? When will the human mind grow so true and devotional as to feel greater awe at the actual maintenance of the substance and white-heat of fervently glowing and im- petuously sparkling life, than at its own dreamy thoughts and languid visions of efficient agency ? In every one of us, experience organically gathered-up since the first dawn of life is now at this moment, as a systematised and identically abiding whole, standing ready to test the inrush of casual occurrences. An endless train of beings, with endless trains of conscious phenomena, have for ever vanished ; yet the life- won results of these existences have all been preserved in actual presence, and are now offered as a totality of en- duringly organised and generically recognising experience to whatever may individually happen to us. The irretrievable Past, moment for moment, sunk away into the lost waste of inexistence, is counter to all thought-expectation found, nevertheless, miraculously rescued through the potency of Organisation. Even now it is effectually present with us, a transindividual power, perpetuating the achievements of our race, and responsibly linking our own little being to all that has gone before and to all that will ever humanly come hereafter. The sacred presence of all-involving, hope-bearing life is, indeed, a mystery; a deep inscrutable mystery, en- folding us wholly. But why invest with its secret bare emptiness beyond, when it is vitality itself that is so replete with transcendent meaning ? By recognising the process through which organic identity and unity are maintained under constant and manifold