MARTINEAU AND MATERIALISM. 143 



the tree grew, and what will becorae of it when the tree is sawn into 

 planks, or consumed in fii'e ? 



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 conces- 

 sion ! Think of the acorn, of the earth, and of the solar light and 

 heat was ever such necromancy dreamed 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 over- 

 whelmed 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 suc- 

 cession, and poured out at a distance from the instrument. The strings 

 of the piano vibrate, not singly, but ten at a time. Every string sub- 

 divides, 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 vibra- 

 tion 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 

 realize 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 um- 

 brageous 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 exu- 

 berant 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 subtiler than that 

 of the piano, passing unheard through these tiny boughs, and issuing 

 in what Mr. Martineau would opulently call the " clustered magnifi- 

 cence " 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 insig- 

 nificant 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 tlie 



