Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 24, 1870 (IA b22307643).pdf/38

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sensation grows into perception, wider rela- tions for good and for evil disclose them- selves, and these higher creatures, in the same proportion, avoid what is unfavourable, or seek, on the contrary, by wider move- ments, the necessary conditions for their existence. As perception leads to know. ledge, and mind developes, means of a higher kind are used, and the intellect obviates or regulates the disturbing conditions, until man becomes cosmopolitan, and greatly in- dependent of the varying forces around him.

He stands, as it has been remarked, at the beginning of a new epoch of existence. His body, moulded by those conditions which have equally acted upon other forms, retains a natural alliance to them, so that the com- parative anatomist finds it difficult to place him in a group distinct from quadrumana; but the inner developments of his nature have fixed a gulf between him and the crea- tures outwardly allied to him which is immea- surable and impassable. By what steps or