Samuel Johnson was an enthusiastic evolutionist, but of mind itself, not of matter as ripening into mind. The ordinary conception of evolution,--that the higher came from the lower,--was exceedingly repugnant to him. Every kind of materialism he abhorred as illogical and irrational. The theories of Comte,--that "mind is cerebration;" of Haeckel,--that it is a "function of brain and nerve;" of Strauss,--that "one's self is his body;" of Taine,--that a man is "a series of sensations," were to him as absurd, in science or philosophy, as they were fatal to aspiration and progress. The crude definition of evolution as production of the highest by inherent force of the lowest is here supplanted by one which recognizes material parentage as itself involving, even in its lowest stages, the entire cosmic _consensus_, of whose unknown force mind is the highest known exponent. He is alluding to Tyndall's statement that mind is evolved from the universe as a whole, not from inorganic matter. For himself, he says: Ideas were not demonstrated, are not demonstrable. No data of observation can express their universal meaning.... What else can we say of ideas than that they are wondrous intimacies of the soul with the Infinite and Eternal, its contacts with universal forces, its prophetic ventures and master steps beyond any past!... The grand words, "I ought" refuse to be explained by dissolving the notion of right into individual calculation of consequences, or by expounding the sense of duty as the cumulative product of observed relation of succession.... How explain as a "greater happiness principle," or an inherited product of observed consequences, that sovereign and eternal law of mind whose imperial edict lifts all calculations and measures into functions of an infinite meaning? And how vain to accredit or ascribe to revelation, institution, or redemption, this necessary allegiance to the law of our being, which is liberty and loyalty in one? This is absolute enough. It is plain that to this writer the notion of extracting intellect from form is ridiculous.