MABTINEAU AND MATERIALISM, 141 



an imponderable formative soul unites itself with the substance after 

 its escape from the liquid. If he should espouse this hypothesis, then 

 I should demand of him an immediate exercise of that Vorstellungs- 

 fuhigkeit, with which, in my efforts to think clearly, I can nev^er dis- 

 pense. 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 was localized 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 inquire 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 abolish 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 anyway simplified by the assump- 

 tion 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 man unmannerly who would denounce me 

 for rejecting this notion of a sepai*ate soul, and for holding tlie snow- 

 crystal to be " matter." 



But then what an astonishing addition is here made to the powers 

 of matter ! Who woiild have dreamed, 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 as- 

 sumption 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 ignorantly defi-auded 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. 



The reader of my small contributions to the literature which deals 

 with the overlapping margins of science and theology will have 



