Front matter (continued 14)

If you ask me whether there exists the least evidence to prove that any form of life can be developed out of matter, without demonstrable antecedent life, my reply is that evidence considered perfectly conclusive by many has been adduced; and that were some of us who have pondered this question to follow a very common example, and accept testimony because it falls in with our belief, we also should eagerly close with the evidence referred to. But there is in the true man of science a desire stronger than the wish to have his beliefs upheld; namely, the desire to have them true. And this stronger wish causes him to reject the most plausible support, if he has reason to suspect that it is vitiated by error. Those to whom I refer as having studied this question, believing the evidence offered in favour of 'spontaneous generation' to be thus vitiated, cannot accept it. They know full well that the chemist now prepares from inorganic matter a vast array of substances, which were some time ago regarded as the sole products of vitality. They are intimately acquainted with the structural power of matter, as evidenced in the phenomena of crystallisation. They can justify scientifically their belief in its potency, under the proper conditions, to produce organisms. But, in reply to your question, they will frankly admit their inability to point to any satisfactory experimental proof that life can be developed, save from demonstrable antecedent life. As already indicated, they draw the line from the highest organisms through lower ones down to the lowest; and it is the prolongation of this line by the intellect, beyond the range of the senses, that leads them to the conclusion which Bruno so boldly enunciated. [Footnote: Bruno was a Pantheist,' not an 'Atheist' or a 'Materialist.']

The 'materialism' here professed may be vastly different from what you suppose, and I therefore crave your gracious patience to the end. 'The question of an external world,' says J. S. Mill, 'is the great battleground of metaphysics.' [Footnote: 'Examination of Hamilton,' p. 154.] Mr. Mill himself reduces external phenomena to 'possibilities of sensation.' Kant, as we have seen, made time and space 'forms' of our own intuitions. Fichte, having first by the inexorable logic of his understanding proved himself to be a mere link in that chain of eternal causation which holds so rigidly in nature, violently broke the chain by making nature, and all that it inherits, an apparition of the mind. [Footnote: 'Bestimmung des Menschen.'] And it is by no means easy to combat such notions. For when I say 'I see you,' and that there is not the least doubt about it, the obvious reply is, that what I am really conscious of is an affection of my own retina. And if I urge that my sight can be checked by touching you, the retort would be that I am equally transgressing the limits of fact; for what I am really conscious of is, not that you are there, but that the nerves of my hand have undergone a change.

All we hear, and see, and touch, and taste, and smell, are, it would be urged, mere variations of our own condition, beyond which, even to the extent of a hair's breadth, we cannot go. That anything answering to our impressions exists outside of ourselves is not a fact, but an inference, to which all validity would be denied by an idealist like Berkeley, or by a sceptic like Hume. Mr. Spencer takes another line. With him, as with the uneducated man, there is no doubt or question as to the existence of an external world. But he differs from the uneducated, who think that the world really is what consciousness represents it to be. Our states of consciousness are mere symbols of an outside entity which produces them and determines the order of their succession, but the real nature of which we can never know. [Footnote: In a paper, at once popular and profound, entitled 'Recent Progress in the Theory of Vision,' contained in the volume of lectures by Helmholtz, published by Longmans, this symbolism of our states of consciousness is also dwelt upon. The impressions of sense are the mere signs of external things. In this paper Helmholtz contends strongly against the view that the consciousness of space is inborn; and he evidently doubts the power of the chick to pick up grains of corn without preliminary lessons. On this point, he says, further experiments are needed. Such experiments have been since made by Mr. Spalding, aided, I believe, in some of his observations by the accomplished and deeply lamented Lady Amberly; and they seem to prove conclusively that the chick does not need a single moment's tuition to enable it to stand, run, govern the muscles of its eyes, and peck. Helmholtz, however, is contending against the notion of pre-established harmony; and I am not aware of his views as to the organisation of experiences of race or breed.] In fact, the whole process of evolution is the manifestation of a Power absolutely inscrutable to the intellect of man. As little in our day as in the days of Job can man by searching find this Power out. Considered fundamentally, then, it is by the operation of an insoluble mystery that life on earth is evolved, species differentiated, and mind unfolded, from their prepotent elements in the immeasurable past.

The strength of the doctrine of Evolution consists, not in an experimental demonstration (for the subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof), but in its general harmony with scientific thought. From contrast, moreover, it derives enormous relative cogency. On the one side we have a theory (if it could with any propriety be so called) derived, as were the theories referred to at the beginning of this Address, not from the study of nature, but from the observation of men — a theory which converts the Power whose garment is seen in the visible universe into an Artificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting by broken efforts as man is seen to act. On the other side we have the conception that all we see around us, and all we feel within us — the phenomena; physical nature as well as those of the human mind — have their unsearchable roots in a cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an infinitesimal span of which is offered to the investigation of man. And even this span is only knowable in part. We can trace the development of a nervous system, and correlate with it the parallel phenomena of sensation and thought. We see with undoubting certainty that they go hand in hand. But we try to soar in a vacuum the moment we seek to comprehend the connection between them. An Archimedean fulcrum is here required which the human mind cannot command; and the effort to solve the problem — to borrow a comparison from an illustrious friend of mine — is like that of a man trying to lift himself by his own waistband. All that has been said in this discourse is to be taken in connection with this fundamental truth.

When' nascent senses' are spoken of, when 'the differentiation of a tissue at first vaguely sensitive all over' is spoken of, and when these possessions and processes are associated with 'the modification of an organism by its environment,' the same parallelism, without contact, or even approach to contact, is implied. Man the object is separated by an impassable gulf from man the subject. There is no motor energy in the human intellect to carry it, without logical rupture, from the one to the other.

§ 9.

The doctrine of Evolution derives man, in his totality, from the interaction of organism and environment through countless ages past. The Human Understanding, for example, — that faculty which Mr. Spencer has turned so skilfully round upon its own antecedents — is itself a result of the play between organism and environment through cosmic ranges of time. Never, surely, did prescription plead so irresistible a claim. But then it comes to pass that, over and above his understanding, there are many other things appertaining to man, whose prescriptive rights are quite as strong as those of the understanding itself. It is a result, for example, of the play of organism and environment that sugar is sweet, and that aloes are bitter; that the smell of henbane differs' from the perfume of a rose. Such facts of consciousness (for which, by the way, no adequate reason has ever been rendered) are quite as old as the understanding; and many other things can boast an equally ancient origin. Mr. Spencer at one place refers to that most powerful of passions — the amatory passion — as one which, when it first occurs, is antecedent to all relative experience whatever; and we may press its claim as being at least as ancient, and as valid, as that of the understanding itself. Then there are such things woven into the texture of man as the feeling of Awe, Reverence, Wonder — and not alone the sexual love just referred to, but the love of the beautiful, physical, and moral, in Nature, Poetry, and Art. There is also that deep-set feeling, which, since the earliest dawn of history, and probably for ages prior to all history, incorporated itself in the Religious of the world. You, who have escaped from these religions into the high-and-dry light of the intellect, may deride them; but in so doing you deride accidents of form merely, and fail to touch the immovable basis of the religious sentiment in the nature of man. To yield this sentiment reasonable satisfaction is the problem of problems at the present hour. And grotesque in relation to scientific culture as many of the religions of the world have been and are — dangerous, nay, destructive, to the dearest privileges of freemen as some of them undoubtedly have been, and would, if they could, be again — it will be wise to recognise them as the forms of a force, mischievous if permitted to intrude on the region of objective knowledge, over which it holds no command, but capable of adding, in the region of poetry and emotion, inward completeness and dignity to man.

Feeling, I say again, dates from as old an origin and as high a source as intelligence, and it equally demands its range of play. The wise teacher of humanity will recognise the necessity of meeting this demand, rather than of resisting it on account of errors and absurdities of form. What we should resist, at all hazards, is the attempt made in the past, and now repeated, to found upon this elemental bias of man's nature a system which should exercise despotic sway over his intellect. I have no fear of such a consummation. Science has already to some extent leavened the world; it will leaven it more and more. I should look upon the mild light of science breaking in upon the minds of the youth of Ireland, and strengthening gradually to the perfect day, as a surer check to any intellectual or spiritual tyranny which may threaten this island, than the laws of princes or the swords of emperors. We fought and won our battle even in the Middle Ages: should we doubt the issue of another conflict with our broken foe?

The impregnable position of science may be described in a few words. We claim, and we shall wrest from theology, the entire domain of cosmological theory. All schemes and systems which thus infringe upon the domain of science must, in so far as they do this, submit to its control, and relinquish all thought of controlling it. Acting otherwise proved always disastrous in the past, and it is simply fatuous to-day. Every system which would escape the fate of an organism too rigid to adjust itself to its environment, must be plastic to the extent that the growth of knowledge demands. When 'this truth has been thoroughly taken in, rigidity will be relaxed, exclusiveness diminished, things now deemed essential will be dropped, and elements now rejected will be assimilated. The lifting of the life is the essential point; and as long as dogmatism, fanaticism, and intolerance are kept out, various modes of leverage may be employed to raise life to a higher level.

Science itself not unfrequently derives motive power from an ultra-scientific source. Some of its greatest discoveries have been made under the stimulus of a non-scientific ideal. This was the case among the ancients, and it has been so amongst ourselves. Mayer, Joule, and Colding, whose names are associated with the greatest of modern generalisations, were thus influenced. With his usual insight, Lange at one place remarks, that 'it is not always the objectively correct and intelligible that helps man most, or leads most quickly to the fullest and truest knowledge. As the sliding body upon the brachystochrone reaches its end sooner than by the straighter road of the inclined plane, so, through the swing of the ideal, we often arrive at the naked truth more rapidly than by the processes of the understanding.' Whewell speaks of enthusiasm of temper as a hindrance to science; but he means the enthusiasm of weak heads. There is a strong and resolute enthusiasm in which science finds an ally; and it is to the lowering of this fire, rather than to the diminution of intellectual insight, that the lessening productiveness of men of science, in their mature years, is to be ascribed. Mr. Buckle sought to detach intellectual achievement from moral force. He gravely erred; for without moral force to whip it into action, the achievement of the intellect would be poor indeed.

It has been said by its opponents that science divorces itself from literature; but the statement, like so many others, arises from lack of knowledge. A glance at the less technical writings of its leaders — of its Helmholtz, its Huxley, and its Du Bois-Reymond — would show what breadth of literary culture they command. Where among modern writers can you find their superiors in clearness and vigour of literary style? Science desires not isolation, but freely combines with every effort towards the bettering of man's estate. Single-handed, and supported, not by outward sympathy, but by inward force, it has built at least one great wing of the many-mansioned home which man in his totality demands. And if rough walls and protruding rafter-ends indicate that on one side the edifice is still incomplete, it is only by wise combination of the parts required, with those already irrevocably built, that we can hope for completeness. There is no necessary incongruity between what has been accomplished and what remains to be done. The moral glow of Socrates, which we all feel by ignition, has in it nothing incompatible with the physics of Anaxagoras which he so much scorned, but which he would hardly scorn to-day. And here I am reminded of one among us, hoary, but still strong, whose prophet-voice some thirty years ago, far more than any other of this age, unlocked whatever of life and nobleness lay latent in its most gifted minds — one fit to stand beside Socrates or the Maccabean Eleazar, and to dare and suffer all that they suffered and dared — fit, as he once said of Fichte, Ito have been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed of Beauty and Virtue in the groves of Academe.' With a capacity to grasp physical principles which his friend Goethe did not possess, and which even total lack of exercise has not been able to reduce to atrophy, it is the world's loss that he, in the vigour of his years, did not open his mind and sympathies to science, and make its conclusions a portion of his message to mankind. Marvellously endowed as he was — equally equipped on the side of the Heart and of the Understanding — he might have done much towards teaching us how to reconcile the claims of both, and to enable them in coming times to dwell together, in unity of spirit and in the bond of peace.

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And now the end is come. With more time, or greater strength and knowledge, what has been here said might have been better said, while worthy matters, here omitted, might have received fit expression. But there would have been no material deviation from the views set forth. As regards myself, they are not the growth of a day; and as regards you, I thought you ought to know the environment which, with or without your consent, is rapidly surrounding you, and in relation to which some adjustment on your part may be necessary. A hint of Hamlet's, however, teaches us how the troubles of common life may be ended; and it is perfectly possible for you and me to purchase intellectual peace at the price of intellectual death. The world is not without refuges of this description; nor is it wanting in persons who seek their shelter, and try to persuade others to do the same. The unstable and the weak have yielded and will yield to this persuasion, and they to whom repose is sweeter than the truth. But I would exhort you to refuse the offered shelter, and to scorn the base repose — to accept, if the choice be forced upon you, commotion before stagnation, the breezy leap of the torrent before the foetid stillness of the swamp. In the course of this Address I have touched on debatable questions, and led you over what will be deemed dangerous ground — and this partly with the view of telling you that, as regards these questions, science claims unrestricted right of search. It is not to the point to say that the views of Lucretius and Bruno, of Darwin and Spencer, may be wrong. Here I should agree with you, deeming it indeed certain that these views will undergo modification. But the point is, that, whether right or wrong, we claim the right to discuss them. For science, however, no exclusive claim is here made; you are not urged to erect it into an idol. The inexorable advance of man's understanding in the path of knowledge, and those unquenchable claims of his moral and emotional nature, which the understanding can never satisfy, are here equally set forth. The world embraces not only a Newton, but a Shakspeare — not only a Boyle, but a Raphael — not only a Kant, but a Beethoven — not only a Darwin, but a Carlyle. Not in each of these, but in all, is human nature whole. They are not opposed, but supplementary — not mutually exclusive, but reconcilable. And if, unsatisfied with them all, the human mind, with the yearning of a pilgrim for his distant home, will still turn to the Mystery from which it has emerged, seeking so to fashion it as to give unity to thought and faith; so long as this is done, not only without intolerance or bigotry of any kind, but with the enlightened recognition that ultimate fixity of conception is here unattainable, and that each succeeding age must be held free to fashion the mystery in accordance with its own needs — then, casting aside all the restrictions of Materialism, I would affirm this to be a field for the noblest exercise of what, in contrast with the knowing faculties, may be called the creative faculties of man. Here, however, I touch a theme too great for me to handle, but which will assuredly be handled by the loftiest minds, when you and I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted into the infinite azure of the past.

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X. APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

1874.

THE world has been frequently informed of late that I have raised up against myself a host of enemies; and considering, with few exceptions, the deliverances of the Press, and more particularly of the religious Press, I am forced to admit that the statement is only too true. I derive some comfort, nevertheless, from the reflection of Diogenes, transmitted to us by Plutarch, that 'he who would be saved must have good friends or violent enemies; and that he is best off who possesses both.' This 'best' condition, I have reason to believe, is mine.

Reflecting on the fraction I have read of recent remonstrances, appeals, menaces, and judgments — covering not only the world that now is, but that which is to come — I have noticed with mournful interest how trivially men seem to be influenced by what they call their religion, and how potently by that 'nature' which it is the alleged province of religion to eradicate or subdue. From fair and manly argument, from the tenderest and holiest sympathy on the part of those who desire my eternal good, I pass by many gradations, through deliberate unfairness, to a spirit of bitterness, which desires with a fervour inexpressible in words my eternal ill. Now, were religion the potent factor, we might expect a homogeneous utterance from those professing a common creed, while, if human nature be the really potent factor, we may expect utterances as heterogeneous as the characters of men. As a matter of fact we have the latter; suggesting to my mind that the common religion, professed and defended by these different people, is merely the accidental conduit through which they pour their own tempers, lofty or low, courteous or vulgar, mild or ferocious, as the case may be. Pure abuse, however, as serving no good end, I have, wherever possible, deliberately avoided reading, wishing, indeed, to keep, not only hatred, malice, and uncharitableness, but even every trace of irritation, far away from my side of a discussion which demands not only good-temper, but largeness, clearness, and many-sidedness of mind, if it is to guide us to even provisional solutions.

It has been stated, with many variations of note and comment, that in the Address as subsequently published by Messrs. Longman I have retracted opinions uttered at Belfast. A Roman Catholic writer is specially strong upon this point. Startled by the deep chorus of dissent which my 'dazzling fallacies' have evoked, I am now trying to retreat. This he will by no means tolerate. 'It is too late now to seek to hide from the eyes of mankind one foul blot, one ghastly deformity. Professor Tyndall has himself told us how and where this Address of his was composed. It was written among the glaciers and the solitudes of the Swiss mountains. It was no hasty, hurried, crude production; its every sentence bore marks of thought and care.

My critic intends to be severe: he is simply just. In the 'solitudes' to which he refers I worked with deliberation, endeavouring even to purify my intellect by disciplines similar to those enjoined by his own Church for the sanctification of the soul. I tried, moreover, in my ponderings to realise not only the lawful, but the expedient; and to permit no fear to act upon my mind, save that of uttering a single word on which I could not take my stand, either in this or in any other world.

Still my time was so brief, the difficulties arising from my isolated position were so numerous, and my thought and expression so slow, that, in a literary point of view, I halted, not only behind the ideal, but behind the possible. Hence, after the delivery of the Address, I went over it with the desire, not to revoke its principles, but to improve it verbally, and above all to remove any word which might give colour to the notion of 'crudeness, hurry, or haste.'

In connection with the charge of Atheism my critic refers to the Preface to the second issue of the Belfast Address: 'Christian men,' I there say, 'are proved by their writings to have their hours of weakness and of doubt, as well as their hours of strength and of conviction; and men like myself share, in their own way, these variations of mood and tense. Were the religious moods of many of my assailants the only alternative ones, I do not know how strong the claims of the doctrine of "Material Atheism" upon my allegiance might be. Probably they would be very strong. But, as it is, I have noticed during years of self-observation that it is not in hours of clearness and vigour that this doctrine commends itself to my mind; that in the presence of stronger and healthier thought it ever dissolves and disappears, as offering no solution of the mystery in which we dwell, and of which we form a part.'

With reference to this honest and reasonable utterance my censor exclaims, 'This is a most remarkable passage. Much as we dislike seasoning polemics with strong words, we assert that this Apology only tends to affix with links of steel to the name of Professor Tyndall, the dread imputation against which be struggles.'

Here we have a very fair example of subjective religious vigour. But my quarrel with such exhibitions is that they do not always represent objective fact. No atheistic reasoning can, I hold, dislodge religion from the human heart. Logic cannot deprive us of life, and religion is life to the religious. As an experience of consciousness it is beyond the assaults of logic. But the religious life is often projected in external forms — I use the word in its widest sense — and this embodiment of the religious sentiment will have to bear more and more, as the world become more enlightened, the stress of scientific tests. We must be careful of projecting into external nature that which belongs to ourselves. My critic commits this mistake: he feels, and takes delight in feeling, that I am struggling, and he obviously experiences the most exquisite pleasures of 'the muscular sense' in holding me down. His feelings are as real, as if his imagination of what mine are were equally real. His picture of my 'struggles' is, however, a mere delusion. I do not struggle. I do not fear the charge of Atheism; nor should I even disavow it, in reference to any definition of the Supreme which he, or his order, would be likely to frame. His 'links' and his 'steel' and his 'dread imputations' are, therefore, even more unsubstantial than my 'streaks of morning cloud,' and they may be permitted to vanish together.

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These minor and more purely personal matters at an end, the weightier allegation remains, that at Belfast I misused my position by quitting the domain of science, and making an unjustifiable raid into the domain of theology. This I fail to see. Laying aside abuse, I hope my accusers will consent to reason with me. Is it not lawful for a scientific man to speculate on the antecedents of the solar system? Did Kant, Laplace, and William Herschel quit their legitimate spheres, when they prolonged the intellectual vision beyond the boundary of experience, and propounded the nebular theory? Accepting that theory as probable, is it not permitted to a scientific man to follow up, in idea, the series of changes associated with the condensation of the nebulae; to picture the successive detachment of planets and moons, and the relation of all of them to the sun? If I look upon our earth, with its orbital revolution and axial rotation, as one small issue of the process which made the solar system what it is, will any theologian deny my right to entertain and express this theoretic view? Time was when a multitude of theologians would have been found to do so — when that archenemy of science which now vaunts its tolerance would have made a speedy end of the man who might venture to publish any opinion of the kind. But, that time, unless the world is caught strangely slumbering, is for ever past.

As regards inorganic nature, then, we may traverse, without let or hindrance, the whole distance which separates the nebulae from the worlds of to-day. But only a few years ago this now conceded ground of science was theological ground. I could by no means regard this as the final and sufficient concession of theology; and, at Belfast, I thought it not only my right but my duty to state that, as regards the organic world, we must enjoy the freedom which we have already won in regard to the inorganic. I could not discern the shred of a title-deed which gave any man, or any class of men, the right to open the door of one of these worlds to the scientific searcher, and to close the other against him. And I considered it frankest, wisest, and in the long run most conducive to permanent peace, to indicate, without evasion or reserve, the ground that belongs to Science, and to which she will assuredly make good her claim.

I have been reminded that an eminent predecessor of mine in the Presidential chair, expressed a totally different view of the Cause of things from that enunciated by me. In doing so he transgressed the bounds of science at least as much as I did; but nobody raised an outcry against him. The freedom he took I claim. And looking at what I must regard as the extravagances of the religious world; at the very inadequate and foolish notions concerning this universe which are entertained by the majority of our authorised religious teachers; at the waste of energy on the part of good men over things unworthy, if I may say it without discourtesy, of the attention of enlightened heathens; the fight about the fripperies of Ritualism, and the verbal quibbles of the Athanasian Creed; the forcing on the public view of Pontigny Pilgrimages; the dating of historic epochs from the definition of the Immaculate Conception; the proclamation of the Divine Glories of the Sacred Heart — standing in the midst of these chimeras, which astound all thinking men, it did not appear to me extravagant to claim the public tolerance for an hour and a half, for the statement of more reasonable views — views more in accordance with the verities which science has brought to light, and which many weary souls would, I thought, welcome with gratification and relief.

But to come to closer quarters. The expression to which the most violent exception has been taken is this: 'Abandoning all disguise, the confession I feel bound to make before you is, that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and quality of life.' To call it a 'chorus of dissent,' as my Catholic critic does, is a mild way of describing the storm of opprobrium with which this statement has been assailed. But the first blast of passion being past, I hope I may again ask my opponents to consent to reason. First of all, I am blamed for crossing the boundary of the experimental evidence. This, I reply, is the habitual action of the scientific mind — at least of that portion of it which applies itself to physical investigation. Our theories of light, heat, magnetism, and electricity, all imply the crossing of this boundary. My paper on the 'Scientific Use of the Imagination,' and my 'Lectures on Light,' illustrate this point in the amplest manner; and in the Article entitled 'Matter and Force' in the present volume I have sought, incidentally, to make clear, that in physics the experiential incessantly leads to the ultra-experiential; that out of experience there always grows something finer than mere experience, and that in their different powers of ideal extension consists, for the most part, the difference between the great and the mediocre investigator. The kingdom of science, then, cometh not by observation and experiment alone, but is completed by fixing the roots of observation and experiment in a region inaccessible to both, and in dealing with which we are forced to fall back upon the picturing power of the mind.

Passing the boundary of experience, therefore, does not, in the abstract, constitute a sufficient ground for censure. There must have been something in my particular mode of crossing it which provoked this tremendous 'chorus of dissent.'

Let us calmly reason the point out. I hold the nebular theory as it was held by Kant, Laplace, and William Herschel, and as it is held by the best scientific intellects of to-day. According to it, our sun and planets were once diffused through space as an impalpable haze, out of which, by condensation, came the solar system. What caused the haze to condense? Loss of heat. What rounded the sun and planets? That which rounds a tear — molecular force. For aeons, the immensity of which overwhelms man's conceptions, the earth was unfit to maintain what we call life. It is now covered with visible living things. They are not formed of matter different from that of the earth around them. They are, on the contrary, bone of its bone, and flesh of its flesh. How were they introduced? Was life implicated in the nebula — as part, it may be, of a vaster and wholly Unfathomable Life; or is it the work of a Being standing outside the nebula, who fashioned it, and vitalised it; but whose own origin and ways are equally past finding out? As far as the eye of science has hitherto ranged through nature, no intrusion of purely creative power into any series of phenomena has ever been observed. The assumption of such a power to account for special phenomena, though often made, has always proved a failure. It is opposed to the very spirit of science; and I therefore assumed the responsibility of holding up, in contrast with it, that method of nature which it has been the vocation and triumph of science to disclose, and in the application of which we can alone hope for further light. Holding, then, 'that the nebulae and the solar system, life included, stand to each other in the relation of the germ to the finished organism, I reaffirm here, not arrogantly, or defiantly, but without a shade of indistinctness, the position laid down at Belfast.

Not with the vagueness belonging to the emotions, but with the definiteness belonging to the understanding, the scientific man has to put to himself these questions regarding the introduction of life upon the earth. He will be the last to dogmatise upon the subject, for he knows best that certainty is here for the present unattainable. His refusal of the creative hypothesis is less an assertion of knowledge than a protest against the assumption of knowledge which must long, if not for ever, lie beyond us, and the claim to which is the source of perpetual confusion upon earth. With a mind open to conviction he asks his opponents to show him an authority for the belief they so strenuously and so fiercely uphold. They can do no more than point to the Book of Genesis, or some other portion of the Bible. Profoundly interesting, and indeed pathetic, to me are those attempts of the opening mind of man to appease its hunger for a Cause. But the Book of Genesis has no voice in scientific questions. To the grasp of geology, which it resisted for a time, it at length yielded like potter's clay; its authority as a system of cosmogony being discredited on all hands, by the abandonment of the obvious meaning of its writer. It is a poem, not a scientific treatise. In the former aspect it is for ever beautiful: in the latter aspect it has been, and it will continue to be, purely obstructive and hurtful. To knowledge its value has been negative, leading, in rougher ages than ours, to physical, and even in our own' free' age to moral, violence.

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No incident connected with the proceedings at Belfast is more instructive than the deportment of the Catholic hierarchy of Ireland; a body usually too wise to confer notoriety upon an adversary by imprudently denouncing him. The 'Times,' to which I owe a great deal on the score of fair play, where so much has been unfair, thinks that the Irish Cardinal, Archbishops, and Bishops, in a recent manifesto, adroitly employed a weapon which I, at an unlucky moment, placed in their hands. The antecedents of their action cause me to regard it in a different light; and a brief reference to these antecedents will, I think, illuminate not only their proceedings regarding Belfast, but other doings which have been recently noised abroad.

Before me lies a document bearing the date of November 1873, which, after appearing for a moment, unaccountably vanished from public view. It is a Memorial addressed, by Seventy of the Students and Ex-students of the Catholic University in Ireland, to the Episcopal Board of the University; and it constitutes the plainest and bravest remonstrance ever addressed by Irish laymen to their spiritual pastors and masters. It expresses the profoundest dissatisfaction with the curriculum marked out for the students of the University; setting forth the extraordinary fact that the lecture-list for the faculty of Science, published a month before they wrote, did not contain the name of a single Professor of the Physical or Natural Sciences.

The memorialists forcibly deprecate this, and dwell upon the necessity of education in science: 'The distinguishing mark of this age is its ardour for science. The natural sciences have, within the last fifty years, become the chiefest study in the world; they are in our time pursued with an activity unparalleled in the history of mankind. Scarce a year now passes without some discovery being made in these sciences which, as with the touch of the magician's wand, shivers to atoms theories formerly deemed unassailable. It is through the physical and natural sciences that the fiercest assaults are now made on our religion. No more deadly weapon is used against our faith than the facts incontestably proved by modern researches in science.'

Such statements must be the reverse of comfortable to a number of gentlemen who, trained in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, have been accustomed to the unquestioning submission of all other sciences to their divine science of Theology. But this is not all:

One thing seems certain,' say the memorialists, viz., that if chairs for the physical and natural sciences be not soon founded in the Catholic University, very many young men will have their faith exposed to dangers which the creation of a school of science in the University would defend them from. For our generation of Irish Catholics are writhing under the sense of their inferiority in science, and are determined that such inferiority shall not long continue; and so, if scientific training be unattainable at our University, they will seek it at Trinity or at the Queen's Colleges, in not one of which is there a Catholic Professor of Science.'

Those who imagined the Catholic University at Kensington to be due to the spontaneous recognition, on the part of the Roman hierarchy, of the intellectual needs of the age, will derive enlightenment from this, and still more from what follows: for the most formidable threat remains. To the picture of Catholic students seceding to Trinity and the Queen's Colleges, the memorialists add this darkest stroke of all: 'They will, in the solitude of their own homes, unaided by any guiding advice, devour the works of Haeckel, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and Lyell; works innocuous if studied under a professor who would point out the difference between established facts and erroneous inferences, but which are calculated to sap the faith of a solitary student, deprived of a discriminating judgment to which he could refer for a solution of his difficulties.'

In the light of the knowledge given by this courageous memorial, and of similar knowledge otherwise derived, the recent Catholic manifesto did not at all strike me as a chuckle over the mistake of a maladroit adversary, but rather as an evidence of profound uneasiness on the part of the Cardinal, the Archbishops, and the Bishops who signed it. They acted towards the Students' Memorial, however, with their accustomed practical wisdom. As one concession to the spirit which it embodied, the Catholic University at Kensington was brought forth, apparently as the effect of spontaneous inward force, and not of outward pressure becoming too formidable to be successfully opposed.

The memorialists point with bitterness to the fact, that 'the name of no Irish Catholic is known in connection with the physical and natural sciences.' But this, they ought to know, is the complaint of free and cultivated minds wherever a Priesthood exercises dominant power. Precisely the same complaint has been made with respect to the Catholics of Germany. The great national literature and the scientific achievements of that country, in modern times, are almost wholly the work of Protestants. A vanishingly small fraction of it only is derived from members of the Roman Church, although the number of these in Germany is at least as great as that of the Protestants. 'The question arises,' says a writer in an able German periodical, 'what is the cause of a phenomenon so humiliating to the Catholics? It cannot be referred to want of natural endowment due to climate (for the Protestants of Southern Germany have contributed powerfully to the creations of the German intellect), but purely to outward circumstances. And these are readily discovered in the pressure exercised for centuries by the Jesuitical system, which has crushed out of Catholics every tendency to free mental productiveness.' It is, indeed, in Catholic countries that the weight of Ultramontanism has been most severely felt. It is in such countries that the very finest spirits, who have dared, without quitting their faith, to plead for freedom or reform, have suffered extinction. The extinction, however, was more apparent than real, and Hermes, Hirscher, and Gunther, though individually broken and subdued, prepared the way, in Bavaria, for the persecuted but unflinching Frohschammer, for Doellinger, and for the remarkable liberal movement of which Doellinger is the head and guide.

Though moulded for centuries to an obedience unparalleled in any other country, except Spain, the Irish intellect is beginning to show signs of independence; demanding a diet more suited to its years than the pabulum of the Middle Ages. As for the recent manifesto in which Pope, Cardinal, Archbishops, and Bishops are united in one grand anathema, its character and fate are shadowed forth by the Vision of Nebuchadnezzar recorded in the Book of Daniel. It resembles the image, whose form was terrible, but the gold, and silver, and brass, and iron of which rested upon feet of clay. And a stone smote the feet of clay; and the iron, and the brass, and the silver, and the gold, were broken in pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors, and the wind carried them away.

Monsignor Capel has recently been good enough to proclaim at once the friendliness of his Church towards true science, and her right to determine what true science is. Let us dwell for a moment on the proofs of her scientific competence. When Halley's comet appeared in 1456 it was regarded as the harbinger of God's vengeance, the dispenser of war, pestilence, and famine, and by order of the Pope the church bells of Europe were rung to scare the monster away. An additional daily prayer was added to the supplications of the faithful. The comet in due time disappeared, and the faithful were comforted by the assurance that, as in previous instances relating to eclipses, droughts, and rains, so also as regards this 'nefarious' comet, victory had been vouchsafed to the Church.

Both Pythagoras and Copernicus had taught the heliocentric doctrine — that the earth revolves round the sun. In the exercise of her right to determine what true science is, the Church, in the Pontificate of Paul V., stepped in, and by the mouth of the holy Congregation of the Index, delivered, on March 5, 1616, the following decree :—

And whereas it hath also come to the knowledge of the said holy congregation that the false Pythagorean doctrine of the mobility of the earth and the immobility of the sun, entirely opposed to Holy writ, which is taught by Nicolas Copernicus, is now published abroad and received by many. In order that this opinion may not further spread, to the damage of Catholic truth, it is ordered that this and all other books teaching the like doctrine be suspended, and by this decree they are all respectively suspended, forbidden, and condemned.

But why go back to 1456 and 1616? Far be it from me to charge bygone sins upon Monsignor Capel, were it not for the practices he upholds to-day. The most applauded dogmatist and champion of the Jesuits is, I am informed, Perrone. No less than thirty editions of a work of his have been scattered abroad for the healing of the nations. His notions of physical astronomy are virtually those of 1456. He teaches boldly that 'God does not rule by universal law... that when God orders a given planet to stand still He does not detract from any law passed by Himself, but orders that planet to move round the sun for such and such a time, then to stand still, and then again to move, as His pleasure may be.' Jesuitism proscribed Frohschammer for questioning its favourite dogma, that every human soul was created by a direct supernatural act of God, and for asserting that man, body and soul, came from his parents. This is the system that now strives for universal power; it is from it, as Monsignor Capel graciously informs us, that we are to learn what is allowable in science, and what is not!

In the face of such facts, which might be multiplied at will, it requires extraordinary bravery of mind, or a reliance upon public ignorance almost as extraordinary, to make the claims made by Monsignor Capel for his Church.

Before me is a very remarkable letter addressed in 1875 by the Bishop of Montpellier to the Deans and Professors of Faculties of Montpellier, in which the writer very clearly lays down the claims of his Church. He had been startled by an incident occurring in a course of lectures on Physiology given by a professor, of whose scientific capacity there was no doubt, but who, it was alleged, rightly or wrongly, had made his course the vehicle of materialism. 'Je ne me suis point donne,' says the Bishop, 'la mission que je remplis au milieu de vous. "Personne, au temoignage de saint Paul, ne s'attribue à soi-même un pareil honneur; il y faut être appelé de Dieu, comme Aaron." Et pourquoi en est-il ainsi? C'est parse que, selon le même Apôtre, noun devons titre les ambassadeurs de Dieu; et it n'est pas dans les usages, pas plus qu'il n'est dans la raison et le droit, qu'un envoyé s'accrédite lui-même. Mais, si j'ai recu d'En-Haut une mission; si l'Eglise, au nom de Dieu lui-même, a souscrit me lettres de créance, me siéraitil de manquer aux instructions qu'elle m'a données et d'entendre, en un sens différent du sien, le rôle qu'elle m'a confié?

'Or, Messieurs, la sainte Eglise se croit investie du droit absolu d'enseigner les hommes; elle se croit dépositaire de la vérité, non pas de la vérité fragmentaire, incomplète, mêlée de certitude et d'hésitation, mais de la vérité totale, complète, au point de vue religieux. Bien plus, elle est si sûre de l'infaillibilité que son Fondateur divin lui a communiquée, comme la dot magnifique de leur indissoluble alliance, que, même dans l'ordre naturel, scientifique ou philosophique, moral ou politique, elle n'admet pas qu'un système puisse être soutenu et adopté par des chrétiens, s'il contredit à des dogmes définis. Elle considère que la négation volontaire et opiniâtre d'un seul point de sa doctrine rend coupable du péché d'hérésie; et elle pense que toute hérésie formelle, si on ne la rejette pas courageusement avant de paraitre devant Dieu, entraine avec soi la perte certaine de la grâce et de l'éternité.'

The Bishop recalls those whom he addresses from the false philosophy of the present to the philosophy of the past, and foresees the triumph of the latter. 'Avant que le dix-neuvième siècle s'achève, la vieille philosophie scolastique aura repris sa place dans la juste admiration du monde. Il lui faudra pourtant bien du temps pour guérir les maux de tout genre, causés par son indigne rivale; et pendant de longues années encore, ce nom de philosophie, le plus grand de la langue humaine après celui de religion, sera suspect aux âmes qui se souviendront de la science impie et materialiste de Locke, de Condillac ou d'Helvétius. L'heure actuelle est aux sciences naturelles: c'est maintenant l'instrument de combat contre l'Eglise et contre toute foi religieuse. Nous ne les redoutons pas.' Further on the Bishop warns his readers that everything can be abused. Poetry is good, but in excess it may injure practical conduct. 'Les mathématiques sont excellentes: et Bossuet les a louées "comme étant ce qui sert le plus à la justesse du raisonnement;" mais si on s'accoutume exclusivement à leur méthode, rien de ce qui appartient à l'ordre moral ne parait plus pouvoir être démontré; et Fénelon a pu parler de l'ensorcellement et des attraits diaboliqes de la geometrie.'

The learned Bishop thus finally accentuates the claims of the Church:— 'Comme le définissait le Pape Léon X, au cinquième concile oecuménique de Latran, "Le vrai ne peut pas être contraire à lui-même: par conséquent, toute assertion contraire à une vérité de foi révélée est nécessairement et absolument fausse." Il suit de là que, sans entrer dans l'examen scientifique de telle ou telle question de physiologie, mais par la seule certitude de nos dogmes, nous pouvons juger du sort de telle ou telle hypothèse, qui est une machine de guerre anti-chrétienne plutôt qu'une conquête sérieuse sur les secrets et les mystères de la nature… C'est un dogme que l'homme a été formé et faconné des mains de Dieu. Donc il est faux, hérétique, contraire à la dignité du Créateur et offensant pour son chef-d'oeuvre, de dire que l'homme constitue la septième espèce des singes… Hérésie encore de dire que le genre humain n'est pas sorti d'un seul couple, et qu'on y peut compter jusqu'à douze races distinctes!'

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The course of life upon earth, as far as Science can see, has been one of amelioration — a steady advance on the whole from the lower to the higher. The continued effort of animated nature is to improve its condition and raise itself to a loftier level. In man improvement and amelioration depend largely upon the growth of conscious knowledge, by which the errors of ignorance are continually moulted, and truth is organised. It is the advance of knowledge that has given a materialistic colour to the philosophy of this age. Materialism is therefore not a thing to be mourned over, but to be honestly considered — accepted if it be wholly true, rejected if it be wholly false, wisely sifted and turned to account if it embrace a mixture of truth and error. Of late years the study of the nervous system, and its relation to thought and feeling, have profoundly occupied enquiring minds. It is our duty not to shirk — it ought rather to be our privilege to accept — the established results of such enquiries, for here assuredly our ultimate weal depends upon our loyalty to the truth. Instructed as to the control which the nervous system exercises over man's moral and intellectual nature, we shall be better prepared, not only to mend their manifold defects, but also to strengthen and purify both. Is mind degraded by this recognition of its dependence? Assuredly not. Matter, on the contrary, is raised to the level it ought to occupy, and from which timid ignorance would remove it.

But the light is dawning, and it will become stronger as time goes on. Even the Brighton "Church Congress" affords evidence of this. From the manifold confusions of that assemblage my memory has rescued two items, which it would fain preserve: the recognition of a relation between Health and Religion, and the address of the Rev. Harry Jones. Out of the conflict of vanities his words emerge wholesome and strong, because undrugged by dogma, coming directly from the warm brain of one who knows what practical truth means, and who has faith in its vitality and inherent power of propagation.

I wonder whether he is less effectual in his ministry than his more embroidered colleagues? It surely behoves our teachers to come to some definite understanding as to this question of health; to see how, by inattention to it, we are defrauded, negatively and positively: negatively, by the privation of that 'sweetness and light' which is the natural concomitant of good health; positively, by the insertion into life of cynicism, ill-temper, and a thousand corroding anxieties which good health would dissipate. We fear and scorn 'materialism.' But he who knew all about it, and could apply his knowledge, might become the preacher of a new gospel. Not, however, through the ecstatic moments of the individual does such knowledge come, but through the revelations of science, in connection with the history of mankind.

Why should the Roman Catholic Church call gluttony a mortal sin? Why should fasting occupy a place in the disciplines of religion? What is the meaning of Luther's advice to the young clergyman who came to him, perplexed with the difficulties of predestination and election, if it be not that, in virtue of its action upon the brain, when wisely applied, there is moral and religious virtue even in a hydro-carbon? To use the old language, food and drink are creatures of God, and have therefore a spiritual value. Through our neglect of the monitions of a reasonable materialism we sin and suffer daily. I might here point to the train of deadly disorders over which science has given modern society such control — disclosing the lair of the material enemy, ensuring his destruction, and thus preventing that moral squalor and hopelessness which habitually tread on the heels of epidemics in the case of the poor.

Rising to higher spheres, the visions of Swedenborg, and the ecstasy of Plotinus and Porphyry, are phases of that psychical condition, obviously connected with the nervous system and state of health, on which is based the Vedic doctrine of the absorption of the individual into the universal soul. Plotinus taught the devout how to pass into a condition of ecstasy. Porphyry complains of having been only once united to God in eighty-six years, while his master Plotinus had been so united six times in sixty years. [Footnote: I recommend to the reader's particular attention Dr. Draper's important work entitled, 'History of the Conflict between Religion and Science' (Messrs. H. S. King and Co.)] A friend who knew Wordsworth informs me that the poet, in some of his moods, was accustomed to seize hold of an external object to assure himself of his own bodily existence. As states of consciousness such phenomena have an undisputed reality, and a substantial identity; but they are connected with the most heterogeneous objective conceptions. The subjective experiences are similar, because of the similarity of the underlying organisations.

But for those who wish to look beyond the practical facts, there will always remain ample room for speculation. Take the argument of the Lucretian introduced in the Belfast Address. As far as I am aware, not one of my assailants has attempted to answer it. Some of them, indeed, rejoice over the ability displayed by Bishop Butler in rolling back the difficulty on his opponent; and they even imagine that it is the Bishop's own argument that is there employed. But the raising of a new difficulty does not abolish — does not even lessen — the old one, and the argument of the Lucretian remains untouched by anything the Bishop has said or can say.

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And here it may be permitted me to add a word to an important controversy now going on: and which turns on the question: Do states of consciousness enter as links into the chain of antecedence and sequence, which give rise to bodily actions, and to other states of consciousness; or are they merely by-products, which are not essential to the physical processes going on in the brain? Speaking for myself, it is certain that I have no power of imagining states of consciousness, interposed between the molecules of the brain, and influencing the transference of motion among the molecules. The thought 'eludes all mental presentation;' and hence the logic seems of iron strength which claims for the brain an automatic action, uninfluenced by states of consciousness. But it is, I believe, admitted by those who hold the automaton-theory, that states of consciousness are produced by the marshalling of the molecules of the brain: and this production of consciousness by molecular motion is to me quite as inconceivable on mechanical principles as the production of molecular motion by consciousness. If, therefore, I reject one result, I must reject both. I, however, reject neither, and thus stand in the presence of two Incomprehensibles, instead of one Incomprehensible. While accepting fearlessly the facts of materialism dwelt upon in these pages, I bow my head in the dust before that mystery of mind, which has hitherto defied its own penetrative power, and which may ultimately resolve itself into a demonstrable impossibility of self-penetration.

But the secret is an open one — the practical monitions are plain enough, which declare that on our dealings with matter depend our weal and woe, physical and moral. The state of mind which rebels against the recognition of the claims of 'materialism' is not unknown to me. I can remember a time when I regarded my body as a weed, so much more highly did I

prize the conscious strength and pleasure derived from moral and religious feeling — which, I may add, was mine without the intervention of dogma. The error was not an ignoble one, but this did not save it from the penalty attached to error. Saner knowledge taught me that the body is no weed, and that treated as such it would infallibly avenge itself. Am I personally lowered by this change of front? Not so. Give me their health, and there is no spiritual experience of those earlier years — no resolve of duty, or work of mercy, no work of self-renouncement, no solemnity of thought, no joy in the life and aspects of nature — that would not still be mine; and this without the least reference or regard to any purely personal reward or punishment looming in the future.

And now I have to utter a 'farewell' free from bitterness to all my readers; thanking my friends for a sympathy more steadfast, I would fain believe, if less noisy, than the antipathy of my foes; and commending to these a passage from Bishop Butler, which they have either not read or failed to lay to heart. 'It seems,' saith the Bishop, 'that men would be strangely headstrong and self-willed, and disposed to exert themselves with an impetuosity which would render society insupportable, and the living in it impracticable, were it not for some acquired moderation and self-government, some aptitude and readiness in restraining themselves, and concealing their sense of things.'

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XI. THE REV. JAMES MARTINEAU AND THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

[Footnote: Fortnightly Review.]

PRIOR to the publication of the Fifth Edition of these 'Fragments' my attention had been directed by several estimable, and indeed eminent, persons, to an essay by the Rev. James Martineau, as demanding serious consideration at my hands. I tried to give the essay the attention claimed for it, and published my views of it as an Introduction to Part 11. of the 'Fragments.' I there referred, and here again refer with pleasure, to the accord subsisting between Mr. Martineau and myself on certain points of biblical Cosmogony. 'In so far,' says he, 'as Church belief is still committed to a given Cosmogony and natural history of man, it lies open to scientific refutation.' And again: 'It turns out that with the sun and moon and stars, and in and on the earth, before and after the appearance of our race, quite other things have happened than those which the sacred Cosmogony recites.' Once more: 'The whole history of the genesis of things Religion must surrender to the Sciences.' Finally, still more emphatically: 'In the investigation of the genetic order of things, Theology is an intruder, and must stand aside.' This expresses, only in words of fuller pith, the views which I ventured to enunciate in Belfast. 'The impregnable position of Science,' I there say, 'may be stated in a few words. We claim, and we shall wrest from Theology, the entire domain of Cosmological theory.' Thus Theology, so far as it is represented by Mr. Martineau, and Science, so far as I understand it, are in absolute harmony here.

But Mr. Martineau would have just reason to complain of me, if, by partial citation, I left my readers under the impression that the agreement between us is complete. At the opening of the eighty-ninth Session of the Manchester New College, London, on October 6, '1874, he, its principal, delivered an Address bearing the title 'Religion as affected by Modern Materialism;' the references and general tone of which make evident the depth of its author's discontent with my previous deliverance at Belfast. I find it difficult to grapple with the exact grounds of this discontent. Indeed, logically considered, the impression left upon my mind by an essay of great aesthetic merit, containing many passages of exceeding beauty, and many sentiments which none but the pure in heart could utter as they are uttered here, is vague and unsatisfactory. The author appears at times so brave and liberal, at times so timid and captious, and at times, if I dare say it, so imperfectly informed, regarding the position he assails.

At the outset of his Address Mr. Martineau states with some distinctness his 'sources of religious faith.' They are two — the scrutiny of Nature' and 'the interpretation of Sacred Books.' It would have been a theme worthy of his intelligence to have deduced from these two sources his religion as it stands. But not another word is said about the 'Sacred Books.' Having swept with the besom of Science various 'books' contemptuously away, he does not define the Sacred residue; much less give us the reasons why he deems them sacred. [Footnote: Mr. Martineau's use of the term 'sacred' is unintentionally misleading. In his later essays we are taught that he does not mean to restrict it to the Bible. He does not, however, mention the 'books' beyond those of the Bible to which he would apply the term. 1879.] His references to 'Nature,' on the other hand, are magnificent tirades against Nature, intended, apparently, to show the wholly abominable character of man's antecedents if the theory of evolution be true. Here also his mood lacks steadiness. While joyfully accepting, at one place, 'the widening space, the deepening vistas of time, the detected marvels of physiological structure, and the rapid filling-in of the missing links in the chain of organic life,' he falls, at another, into lamentation and mourning over the very theory which renders 'organic life' 'a chain.' He claims the largest liberality for his sect, and avows its contempt for the dangers of possible discovery. But immediately afterwards he damages the claim, and ruins all confidence in the avowal. He professes sympathy with modern Science, and almost in the same breath he treats, or certainly will be understood to treat, the Atomic Theory, and the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy, as if they were a kind of scientific thimble-riggery.

His ardour, moreover, renders him inaccurate causing him to see discord between scientific men where nothing but harmony reigns. In his celebrated Address to the Congress of German Naturforscher, delivered at Leipzig, three years ago, Du Bois-Reymond speaks thus: 'What conceivable connection subsists between definite movements of definite atoms in my brain, on the one hand, and on the other hand such primordial, indefinable, undeniable, facts as these: I feel pain or pleasure; I experience a sweet taste, or smell a rose, or hear an organ, or see something red. …It is absolutely and for ever inconceivable that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms should be otherwise than indifferent as to their own position and motion, past, present, or future. It is utterly inconceivable how consciousness should result from their joint action.'

This language, which was spoken in 1872, Mr. Martineau 'freely' translates, and quotes against me. The act is due to misapprehension. Evidence is at hand to prove that I employed similar language twenty years ago. It is to be found in the 'Saturday Review' for 1860; but a sufficient illustration of the agreement between my friend Du Bois-Reymond and myself, is furnished by the discourse on 'Scientific Materialism,' delivered in 1868, then widely circulated, and reprinted here. The reader who compares the two discourses will see that the same line of thought is pursued in both, and that perfect agreement reigns between my friend and me. In the very Address he criticises, Mr. Martineau might have seen that precisely the same position is maintained. A quotation will prove this :— 'Thus far,' I say, 'our way is clear, but now comes my difficulty. Your atoms are individually without sensation, much more are they without intelligence. May I ask you, then, to try your hand upon this problem? Take your dead hydrogen atoms, your dead oxygen atoms, your dead carbon atoms, your dead nitrogen atoms, your dead phosphorus atoms, and all the other atoms, dead as grains of shot, of which the brain is formed. Imagine them separate and sensationless; observe them running together and forming all imaginable combinations. This, as a purely mechanical process, is seeable by the mind. But can you see, or dream, or in any way imagine, how out of that mechanical act, and from these individually dead atoms, sensation, thought, and emotion are to rise? Are you likely to extract Homer out of the rattling of dice, or the Differential Calculus out of the clash of billiard balls? ... I can follow a particle of musk until it reaches the olfactory nerve; I can follow the waves of sound until their tremors reach the water of the labyrinth, and set the otoliths and Corti's fibres in motion; I can also visualise the waves of aether as they cross the eye and hit the retina. Nay, more, I am able to pursue to the central organ the motion thus imparted at the periphery, and to see in idea the very molecules of the brain thrown into tremors. My insight is not baffled by these physical processes. What baffles and bewilders me is the notion that from these physical tremors things so utterly incongruous with them as sensation, thought, and emotion can be derived.' It is only a complete misapprehension of our true relationship that could induce Mr. Martineau to represent Du Bois-Reymond and myself as opposed to each other.

'The affluence of illustration,' writes an able and sympathetic reviewer of this essay, in the 'New York Tribune,' 'in which Mr. Martineau delights often impairs the distinctness of his statements by diverting the attention of the reader from the essential points of his discussion to the beauty of his imagery, and thus diminishes their power of conviction. 'To the beauties here referred to I bear willing testimony; but the reviewer is strictly just in his estimate of their effect upon my critic's logic. The 'affluence of illustration,' and the heat, and haze, and haste, generated by its reaction upon Mr. Martineau's own mind, often produce vagueness where precision is the one thing needful — poetic fervour where we require judicial calm; and practical unfairness where the strictest justice ought to be, and I willingly believe is meant to be, observed.

In one of his nobler passages Mr. Martineau tells us how the pupils of his college have been educated hitherto: 'They have been trained under the assumptions (1) that the Universe which includes us and folds us round is the life-dwelling of an Eternal Mind; (2) that the world of our abode is the scene of a moral government, incipient but not complete; and (3) that the upper zones of human affection, above the clouds of self and passion, take us into the sphere of a Divine Communion. Into this over-arching scene it is that growing thought and enthusiasm have expanded to catch their light and fire.'

Alpine summits seem to kindle above us as we read these glowing words; we see their beauty and feel their life. At the close of one of the essays here printed, [Footnote: 'Scientific Use of the Imagination.'] I thus refer to the 'Communion' which Mr. Martineau calls 'Divine': "Two things," said Immanuel Kant, "fill me with awe — the starry heavens, and the sense of moral responsibility in man." And in his hours of health and strength and sanity, when the stroke of action has ceased, and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific investigator finds himself overshadowed by the same awe. Breaking contact with the hampering details of earth, it associates him with a power which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but which he can neither analyse nor comprehend. Though 'knowledge' is here disavowed, the 'feelings', of Mr. Martineau and myself are, I think, very much alike. He, nevertheless, censures me — almost denounces me — for referring Religion to the region of Emotion. Surely he is inconsistent here. The foregoing words refer to an inward hue or temperature, rather than to an external object of thought. When I attempt to give the Power which I see manifested in the Universe an objective form, personal or otherwise, it slips away from me, declining all intellectual manipulation. I dare not, save poetically, use the pronoun 'He' regarding it; I dare not call it a 'Mind;' I refuse to call it even a 'Cause.' Its mystery overshadows me; but it remains a mystery, while the objective frames which some of my neighbours try to make it fit, seem to me to distort and desecrate it.

It is otherwise with Mr. Martineau, and hence his discontent. He professes to know where I only claim to feel. He could make his contention good against me if, by a process of verification, he would transform his assumptions into 'objective knowledge.' But he makes no attempt to do so. They remain assumptions from the beginning of his Address to its end. And yet he frequently uses the word 'unverified,' as if it were fatal to the position oh which its incidence falls. 'The scrutiny of Nature' is one of his sources of 'religious faith:' what logical foothold does that scrutiny furnish, on which any one of the foregoing three assumptions could be planted? Nature, according to his picturing, is base and cruel: what is the inference to be drawn regarding its Author? If Nature be 'red in tooth and claw,' who is responsible? On a Mindless nature Mr. Martineau pours the full torrent of his gorgeous invective; but could the 'assumption' of 'an Eternal Mind' — even of a Beneficent Eternal Mind — render the world objectively a whit less mean and ugly than it is? Not an iota. It is man's feelings, and not external phenomena, that are influenced by the assumption. It adds not a ray of light nor a strain of music to the objective sum of things. It does not touch the phenomena of physical nature — storm, flood, or fire — nor diminish by a pang the bloody combats of the animal world. But it does add the glow of religious emotion to the human soul, as represented by Mr. Martineau. Beyond this I defy him to go; and yet he rashly — it might be said petulantly — kicks away the only philosophic foundation on which it is possible for him to build his religion.

He twits incidentally the modern scientific interpretation of nature because of its want of cheerfulness. Let the new future,' he says, 'preach its own gospel, and devise, if it can, the means of making the tidings glad.' This is a common argument: 'If you only knew the comfort of belief!' My reply is that I choose the nobler part of Emerson, when, after various disenchantments, he exclaimed, 'I covet truth!' The gladness of true heroism visits the heart of him who is really competent to say this. Besides, 'gladness' is an emotion, and Mr. Martineau theoretically scorns the emotional. I am not, however, acquainted with a writer who draws more largely upon this source, while mistaking it for something objective. 'To reach the Cause,' he says, 'there is no need to go into the past, as though being missed here, He could be found there. But when once He has been apprehended by the proper organs of divine apprehension, the whole life of Humanity is recognised as the scene of His agency.' That Mr. Martineau should have lived so long, thought so much, and failed to recognise the entirely subjective character of this creed, is highly instructive. His 'proper organs of divine apprehension ' — given, we must assume, to Mr. Martineau and his pupils, but denied to many of the greatest intellects and noblest men in this and other ages — lie at the very core of his emotions.

In fact, it is when Mr. Martineau is most purely emotional that he scorns the emotions; it is when he is most purely subjective that he rejects subjectivity. He pays a just and liberal tribute to the character of John Stuart Mill. But in the light of Mill's philosophy, benevolence, honour, purity, having 'shrunk into mere unaccredited subjective susceptibilities, have lost all support from Omniscient approval, and all presumable accordance with the reality of things.' If Mr. Martineau had given them any inkling of the process by which he renders the 'subjective susceptibilities' objective, or how he arrives at an objective ground of 'Omniscient approval,' gratitude from his pupils would have been his just meed. But, as it is, he leaves them lost in an iridescent cloud of words, after exciting a desire which he is incompetent to appease.

'We are,' he says, in another place, 'for ever shaping our representations of invisible things into forms of definite opinion, and throwing them to the front, as if they were the photographic equivalent of our real faith. It is a delusion which affects us all. Yet somehow the essence of our religion never finds its way into these frames of theory: as we put them together it slips away, and, if we turn to pursue it, still retreats behind; ever ready to work with the will, to unbind and sweeten the affections, and bathe the life with reverence, but refusing to be seen, or to pass from a divine hue of thinking into a human pattern of thought.' This is very beautiful, and mainly so because the man who utters it obviously brings it all out of the treasury of his own heart. But the 'hue' and 'pattern' here so finely spoken of, the former refusing to pass into the latter, are neither more nor less than that 'emotion,' on the one hand, and that 'objective knowledge,' on the other, which have drawn this suicidal fire from Mr. Martineau's battery.

I now come to one of the most serious portions of Mr. Martineau's pamphlet — serious far less on account of its 'personal errors,' than of its intrinsic gravity, though its author has thought fit to give it a witty and sarcastic tone. He analyses and criticises 'the materialist doctrine, which, in our time, is proclaimed with so much pomp, and resisted with so much passion. "Matter is all I want," says the physicist; "give me its atoms alone, and I will explain the universe."' It is thought, even by Mr. Martineau's intimate friends, that in this pamphlet he is answering me. I must therefore ask the reader to contrast the foregoing travesty with what I really do say regarding atoms: 'I do not think that he [the materialist] is entitled to say that his molecular groupings and motions explain everything. In reality, they explain nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the association of two classes of phenomena, of whose real bond of union he is in absolute ignorance.' [Footnote: Address on 'Scientific Materialism.'] This is very different from saying, 'Give me its atoms alone, and I will explain the universe.' Mr. Martineau continues his dialogue with the physicist: '"Good," he says; "take as many atoms as you please. See that they have all that is requisite to Body [a metaphysical B], being homogeneous extended solids." "That is not enough," his physicist replies; "it might do for Democritus and the mathematicians, but I must have something more. The atoms must not only be in motion, and of various shapes, but also of as many kinds as there are chemical elements; for how could I ever get water if I had only hydrogen elements to work with?" "So be it," Mr. Martineau consents to answer, "only this is a considerable enlargement of your specified datum [where, and by whom specified?] — in fact, a conversion of it into several; yet, even at the cost of its monism [put into it by Mr. Martineau], your scheme seems hardly to gain its end; for by what manipulation of your resources will you, for example, educe Consciousness?"'

This reads like pleasantry, but it deals with serious things. For the last seven years the question here proposed by Mr. Martineau, and my answer to it, have been accessible to all. The question, in my words, is briefly this: 'A man can say, "I feel, I think, I love," but how does consciousness infuse itself into the problem?' And here is my answer: The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from the one to the other. They appear together, but we do not know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem, "How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness? "The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable." [Footnote: Bishop Butler's reply to the Lucretian in the 'Belfast Address' is all in the same strain.]

Compare this with the answer which Mr. Martineau puts into the mouth of his physicist, and with which I am generally credited by Mr. Martineau's readers, both in England and America — '"It [the problem of consciousness] does not daunt me at all. Of course you understand that all along my atoms have been affected by gravitation and polarity; and now I have only to insist with Fechner on a difference among molecules: there are the inorganic, which can change only their place, like the particles in an undulation; and there are the organic, which can change their order, as in a globule that turns itself inside out. With an adequate number of these our problem will be manageable." "Likely enough," we may say ["entirely unlikely," say I], "seeing how careful you are to provide for all emergencies; and if any hitch should occur in the next step, where you will have to pass from mere sentiency to thought and will, you can again look in upon your atoms, and fling among them a handful of Leibnitz's monads, to serve as souls in little, and be ready, in a latent form, with that Vorstellungs-faehigkeit which our picturesque interpreters of nature so much prize."'

'But surely,' continues Mr. Martineau, 'you must observe that this "matter" of yours alters its style with every change of service: starting as a beggar with scarce a rag of "property" to cover its bones, it turns up as a prince when large undertakings are wanted. "We must radically change our notions of matter," says Professor Tyndall; and then, he ventures to believe, it will answer all demands, carrying "the promise and potency of all terrestrial life." If the measure of the required "change in our notions" had been specified, the proposition would have had a real meaning, and been susceptible of a test. It is easy travelling through the stages of such an hypothesis; you deposit at your bank a round sum ere you start, and, drawing on it piecemeal at every pause, complete your grand tour without a debt.'

The last paragraph of this argument is forcibly and ably stated. On it I am willing to try conclusions with Mr. Martineau. I may say, in passing, that I share his contempt for the picturesque interpretation of nature, if accuracy of vision be thereby impaired. But the term Vorstellungs-faehigkeit, as used by me, means the power of definite mental presentation, of attaching to words the corresponding objects of thought, and of seeing these in their proper relations, without the interior haze and soft penumbral borders which the theologian loves. To this mode of interpreting nature' I shall to the best of my ability now adhere.

Neither of us, I trust, will be afraid or ashamed to begin at the alphabet of this question. Our first effort must be to understand each other, and this mutual understanding can only be ensured by beginning low down. Physically speaking, however, we need not go below the sea-level. Let us then travel in company to the Caribbean Sea, and halt upon the heated water. What is that sea, and what is the sun that heats it? Answering for myself, I say that they are both matter. I fill a glass with the sea-water and expose it on the deck of the vessel; after some time the liquid has all disappeared, and left a solid residue of salt in the glass behind. We have mobility, invisibility — apparent annihilation. In virtue of

The glad and secret aid The sun unto the ocean paid,

the water has taken to itself wings and flown off as vapour. From the whole surface of the Caribbean Sea such vapour is rising: and now we must follow it — not upon our legs, however, nor in a ship, nor even in a balloon, but by the mind's eye — in other words, by that power of Vorstellung which Mr. Martineau knows so well, and which he so justly scorns when it indulges in loose practices.

Compounding, then, the northward motion of the vapour with the earth's axial rotation, we track our fugitive through the higher atmospheric regions, obliquely across the Atlantic Ocean to Western Europe, and on to our familiar Alps. Here another wonderful metamorphosis occurs. Floating on the cold calm air, and in presence of the cold firmament, the vapour condenses, not only to particles of water, but to particles of crystalline water. These coalesce to stars of snow, which fall upon the mountains in forms so exquisite that, when first seen, they never fail to excite rapture. As to beauty, indeed, they put the work of the lapidary to shame, while as to accuracy they render concrete the abstractions of the geometer. Are these crystals 'matter'? Without presuming to dogmatise, I answer for myself in the affirmative.

Still, a formative power has obviously here come into play which did not manifest itself in either the liquid or the vapour. The question now is, Was not the power 'potential' in both of them, requiring only the proper conditions of temperature to bring it into action? Again I answer for myself in the affirmative. I am, however, quite willing to discuss with Mr. Martineau the alternative hypothesis, that an imponderable formative soul unites itself with the substance after its escape from the liquid state. If he should espouse this hypothesis, then I should demand of him an immediate exercise of that Vorstellungs-faehigkeit, with which, in my efforts to think clearly, I can never dispense. I should ask, At what moment did the soul come in? Did it enter at once or by degrees; perfect from the first, or growing and perfecting itself contemporaneously with its own handiwork? I should also ask whether it is localised or diffused? Does it move about as a lonely builder, putting the bits of solid water in their places as soon as the proper temperature has set in? or is it distributed through the entire mass of the crystal? If the latter, then the soul has the shape of the crystal; but if the former, then I should enquire after its shape. Has it legs or arms? If not, I would ask it to be made clear to me how a thing without these appliances can act so perfectly the part of a builder? (I insist on definition, and ask unusual questions, if haply I might thereby banish unmeaning words.) What were the condition and residence of the soul before it joined the crystal? What becomes of it when the crystal is dissolved? Why should a particular temperature be needed before it can exercise its vocation? Finally, is the problem before us in any way simplified by the assumption of its existence? I think it probable that, after a full discussion of the question, Mr. Martineau would agree with me in ascribing the building power displayed in the crystal to the bits of water themselves. At all events, I should count upon his sympathy so far as to believe that he would consider any one unmannerly who would denounce me for rejecting this notion of a separate soul, and for holding the snow-crystal to be matter.'

But then what an astonishing addition is here made to the powers of matter! Who would have dreamt, without actually seeing its work, that such a power was locked up in a drop of water? All that we needed to make the action of the liquid intelligible was the assumption of Mr. Martineau's 'homogeneous extended atomic solids,' smoothly gliding over one another. But had we supposed the water to be nothing more than this, we should have ignoran defrauded it of an intrinsic architectural power, which the art of man, even when pushed to its utmost degree of refinement, is incompetent to imitate. I would invite Mr. Martineau to consider how inappropriate his figure of a fictitious bank deposit becomes under these circumstances. The 'account current' of matter receives nothing at my hands which could be honestly kept back from it. If, then, 'Democritus and the mathematicians' so defined matter as to exclude the powers here proved to belong to it, they were clearly wrong, and Mr. Martineau, instead of twitting me with my departure from them, ought rather to applaud me for correcting them. [Footnote: Definition implies previous examination of the object defined, and is open to correction or modification as knowledge of the object increases. Such increased knowledge has radically changed our conceptions of the luminiferous aether, converting its vibrations from longitudinal into transverse. Such changes also Mr. Martineau's conceptions of matter are doomed to undergo.]

The reader of my small contributions to the literature which deals with the overlapping margins of Science and Theology, will have noticed how frequently I quote Mr. Emerson. I do so mainly because in him we have a poet and a profoundly religious man, who is really and entirely undaunted by the discoveries of Science, past, present, or prospective. In his case Poetry, with the joy of a bacchanal, takes her graver brother Science by the hand, and cheers him with immortal laughter. By Emerson scientific conceptions are continually transmuted into the finer forms and warmer hues of an ideal world. Our present theme is touched upon in the lines —

The journeying atoms, primordial wholes Firmly draw, firmly drive by their animate poles.

As regards veracity and insight these few words outweigh, in my estimation, all the formal learning expended by Mr. Martineau in those disquisitions on Force, where he treats the physicist as a conjuror, and speaks so wittily of atomic polarity. In fact, without this notion of polarity — this 'drawing' and 'driving' — this attraction and repulsion, we stand as stupidly dumb before the phenomena of Crystallisation as a Bushman before the phenomena of the Solar System. The genesis and growth of the notion I have endeavoured to make clear in my third Lecture on Light, and in the article on 'Matter and Force' published in this volume.

Our further course is here foreshadowed. A Sunday or two ago I stood under an oak planted by Sir John Moore, the hero of Corunna. On the ground near the tree little oaklets were successfully fighting for life with the surrounding vegetation. The acorns had dropped into the friendly soil, and this was the result of their interaction. What is the acorn? what the earth? and what the sun, without whose heat and light the tree could not become a tree, however rich the soil, and however healthy the seed? I answer for myself as before — all 'matter.' And the heat and light which here play so potent a part are acknowledged to be motions of matter. By taking something much lower down in the vegetable kingdom than the oak, we might approach much more nearly to the case of crystallisation already discussed; but this is not now necessary.

If, instead of conceding the sufficiency of matter here, Mr. Martineau should fly to the hypothesis of a vegetative soul, all the questions before asked in relation to the snow-star become pertinent. I would invite him to go over them one by one, and consider what replies he will make to them. He may retort by asking me, 'Who infused the principle of life into the tree?' I say, in answer, that our present question is not this, but another — not who made the tree, but what is it? Is there anything besides matter in the tree? If so, what, and where? Mr. Martineau may have begun by this time to discern that it is not 'picturesqueness,' but cold precision, that my Vorstellungs-faehigkeit demands. How, I would ask, is this vegetative soul to be presented to the mind? where did it flourish before the tree grew? and what will become of it when the tree is sawn into planks, or consumed in fire?

Possibly Mr. Martineau may consider the assumption of this soul to be as untenable and as useless as I do. But then if the power to build a tree be conceded to pure matter, what an amazing expansion of our notions of the 'potency of matter' is implied in the concession' Think of the acorn, of the earth, and of the solar light and heat — was ever such necromancy dreamt of as the production of that massive trunk, those swaying boughs and whispering leaves, from the interaction of these three factors? In this interaction, moreover, consists what we call life. It will be seen that I am not in the least insensible to the wonder of the tree; nay, I should not be surprised if, in the presence of this wonder, I feel more perplexed and overwhelmed than Mr. Martineau himself.

Consider it for a moment. There is an experiment, first made by Wheatstone, where the music of a piano is transferred from its sound-board, through a thin wooden rod, across several silent rooms in succession, and poured out at a distance from the instrument. The strings of the piano vibrate, not singly, but ten at a time. Every string subdivides, yielding not one note, but a dozen. All these vibrations and subvibrations are crowded together into a bit of deal not more than a quarter of a square inch in section. Yet no note is lost. Each vibration asserts its individual rights; and all are, at last, shaken forth into the air by a second sound-board, against which the distant end of the rod presses. Thought ends in amazement when it seeks to realise the motions of that rod as the music flows through it. I turn to my tree and observe its roots, its trunk, its branches, and its leaves. As the rod conveys the music, and yields it up to the distant air, so does the trunk convey the matter and the motion — the shocks and pulses and other vital actions — which eventually emerge in the umbrageous foliage of the tree. I went some time ago through the greenhouse of a friend. He had ferns from Ceylon, the branches of which were in some cases not much thicker than an ordinary pin — hard, smooth, and cylindrical — often leafless for a foot or more. But at the end of every one of them the unsightly twig unlocked the exuberant beauty hidden within it, and broke forth into a mass of fronds, almost large enough to fill the arms. We stand here upon a higher level of the wonderful: we are conscious of a music subtler than that of the piano, passing unheard through these tiny boughs, and issuing in what Mr. Martineau would opulently call the 'clustered magnificence' of the leaves. Does it lessen my amazement to know that every cluster, and every leaf — their form and texture — lie, like the music in the rod, in the molecular structure of these apparently insignificant stems? Not so. Mr. Martineau weeps for' the beauty of the flower fading into a necessity.' I care not whether it comes to me through necessity or through freedom, my delight in it is all the same. I see what he sees with a wonder superadded. To me, as to him, not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these.

I have spoken above as if the assumption of a soul would save Mr. Martineau from the inconsistency of crediting pure matter with the astonishing building power displayed in crystals and trees. This, however, would not be the necessary result; for it would remain to be proved that the soul assumed is not itself matter. When a boy I learnt from Dr. Watts that the souls of conscious brutes are mere matter. And the man who would claim for matter the human soul itself, would find himself in very orthodox company. 'All that is erected,' says Fauste, a famous French bishop of the fifth century, 'is matter. The soul occupies a place; it is enclosed in a body; it quits the body at death, and returns to it at the resurrection, as in the case of Lazarus; the distinction between Hell and Heaven, between eternal pleasures and eternal pains, proves that, even after death, souls occupy a place and are corporeal. God only is incorporeal.' Tertullian, moreover, was quite a physicist in the definiteness of his conceptions regarding the soul. 'The materiality of the soul,' he says, 'is evident from the evangelists. A human soul is there expressly pictured as suffering in hell; it is placed in the middle of a flame, its tongue feels a cruel agony, and it implores a drop of water at the hands of a happier soul. Wanting materiality,' adds Tertullian, 'all this would be without meaning.' [Footnote: The foregoing extracts, which M. Alglave recently brought to light for the benefit of the Bishop of Orleans, are taken from the sixth Lecture of the 'Cours d'Histoire Moderns' of that most orthodox of statesmen, M. Guizot. 'I could multiply,' continues M. Guizot, 'these citations to infinity, and they prove that in the first centuries of our era the materiality of the soul was an opinion not only permitted, but dominant.' Dr. Moriarty, and the synod which he recently addressed, obviously forget their own antecedents. Their boasted succession from the early Church renders them the direct offspring of a 'materialism' more 'brutal' than any ever enunciated by me.]