Recent botanical and entomological researches have made Science familiar with what is termed _Mimicry_. Certain organisms in one Kingdom assume, for purposes of their own, the outward form of organisms belonging to another. This curious hypocrisy is practiced both by plants and animals, the object being to secure some personal advantage, usually safety, which would be denied were the organism always to play its part in Nature _in propria persona_. Thus the _Ceroxylus laceratus_ of Borneo has assumed so perfectly the disguise of a moss-covered branch as to evade the attack of insectivorous birds; and others of the walking-stick insects and leaf-butterflies practice similar deceptions with great effrontery and success. It is a startling result of the indirect influence of Christianity or of a spurious Christianity, that the religious world has come to be populated--how largely one can scarce venture to think--with mimetic species. In few cases, probably, is this a conscious deception. In many doubtless it is induced, as in _Ceroxylus_, by the desire for _safety_. But in a majority of instances it is the natural effect of the prestige of a great system upon those who, coveting its benedictions, yet fail to understand its true nature, or decline to bear its profounder responsibilities. It is here that the test of Life becomes of supreme importance. No classification on the ground of form can exclude mimetic species, or discover them to themselves. But if man's place among the Kingdoms is determined by his functions, a careful estimate of his life in itself and in its reaction upon surrounding lives, ought at once to betray his real position. No matter what may be the moral uprightness of his life, the honorableness of his career, or the orthodoxy of his creed, if he exercises the function of loving the world, that defines his world--he belongs to the Organic Kingdom. He cannot in that case belong to the higher Kingdom. "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." After all, it is by the general bent of a man's life, by his heart-impulses and secret desires, his spontaneous actions and abiding motives, that his generation is declared.