436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



trine of the infallibility of the pope had always been maintained in 

 Ireland. 1 



But this is an episode, intended to disabuse those who, in this coun- 

 try or the United States, may have been misled in regard to the per- 

 sonal points referred to. I now return to the impersonal. The course 

 of life upon earth, as far as Science can see, has been one of ameliora- 

 tion a steady advance on the whole from the lower to the higher. 

 The continued effort of animated Nature is to improve its conditions 

 and raise itself to a loftier level. In man, improvement and ameliora- 

 tion depend largely upon the growth of conscious knowledge, by 

 which the errors of ignorance are continually moulted and truth is 

 organized. It is assuredly the advance of knowledge that has given a 

 materialistic color, to the philosophy of this age. Materialism is, there- 

 fore, 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 of its relation to thought 

 and feeling has profoundly occupied inquiring minds. It is our duty 

 not to shirk it ought rather to be our privilege to accept the estab- 

 lished results of such inquiries, 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 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 be- 

 tween Health and Religion, and the address of the Rev. Harry Jones. 

 Out of the conflict of vanities his words emerge fresh, healthy, and 

 strong, because undrugged by dogma, coming direetly from the warm 

 brain of one who knows what practical truth means, and who has faith 

 in its vitality and inherent power of pi-opagation. I wonder is he less 

 effectual in his ministry than his more embroidered colleagues ? It 

 surely behooves 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, 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 



1 On a memory which dates back to my fifteenth year, when I first read the discus- 

 sion between Mr. Pope and Father McGuire, I should be inclined to rely for proof that 

 the Catholic clergyman, in that discussion, and in the name of his Church, repudiated 

 the doctrine of personal infallibility. 



