MARTIN EAU AND MATERIALISM. 135 



This language, which was spoken in 1872, Mr. Martineau "freely" 

 translates, and quotes against me. The act is due to a misapprehen- 

 sion of his own. Evidence is at hand to prove that I employed the 

 same language twenty years ago. It is to be found in the Saturday 

 Review for 1860; but a sufficient illustration of the agreement be- 

 tween my friend Du Bois-Reymond and myself is furnished by the 

 discourse on " Scientific Materialism," delivered in 1868, then widely 

 circulated, and reprinted here. With a little attention, Mr. Martineau 

 would have seen that, in the very address his essay criticises, precisely 

 the same position is maintained. " You cannot," I there say, " satisfy 

 the human understanding in its demand for logical continuity be- 

 tween molecular processes and the phenomena of consciousness. This 

 is a rock on which materialism must inevitably split whenever it pre- 

 tends to be a complete philosophy of the human mind." 



" The affluence of illustration," writes an able and sympathetic re- 

 viewer of this essay, in the New York Tribune, " in which Mr. Mar- 

 tineau 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 excesses touched upon reach far beyond the 

 reader, to their primal seat and source in Mr. Martineau's own mind ; 

 mixing together there things that ought to be kept apart ; producing 

 vagueness where precision is the one thing needful ; poetic fervor 

 where we require judicial calm ; and practical unfairness Avhere the 

 strictest justice ought to be, and I willingly believe is meant to be, 

 observed. 



lu one of his nobler passages, Mr. Martineau tells us how the pu- 

 pils 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, in- 

 cipient 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 overarching scene it is 

 that growing thought and enthusiasm have expanded to catch their 

 light" and fire." 



Alpine summits must kindle above the mountaineer who reads 

 these stirring words ; I see their beauty and feel their life. Nay, in 

 my own feeble way, at the close of one of the essays here printed, I 

 thus affirm 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 



In the first preface to the Belfast Address I referred to " hours of clearness and 

 vigor " as four years previously I had referred to hours of " health and strength and 



