MARTINEAU AND MATERIALISM. 147 



battle long before Dollinger. His Jesuit colleagues, lie knew, incul- 

 cated the belief that every human soul is sent into the world from 

 God by a separate and supernatural act of creation. In a work en- 

 titled "The Origin of the Human Soul," Prof. Froschammer, the 

 philosopher here alluded to, was hardy enough to question this doc- 

 trine, and to affirm that man, body and soul, comes from his parents, 

 the act of ci-eation being, therefore, mediate and secondary only. The 

 Jesuits keep a sharp lookout on all temerities of this kind, and their 

 organ, the Civiltd Gqttolica, immediately pounced upon Froscham- 

 mer. His book was branded as " pestilent," placed in the Index, and 

 stamped with the condemnation of the Church.' 



It will be seen in the " Apology for the Belfast Address " how 

 simply and beautifully the great Jesuit Perrone causes the Almighty 

 to play with the sun and planets, desiring this one to stop, and an- 

 other to move, according to his pleasure. To Perrone's Vorstellung 

 God is obviously a large Individual who holds the leading-strings of 

 the universe, and orders its steps from a position outside it all. Nor 

 does the notion now under consideration err on the score of indefinite- 

 ness. According to it, the Power whom Goethe does not dare to 

 name, and whom Gassendi and Clerk Maxwell present to us under the 

 guise of a " Manufacturer " of atoms, turns out annually, for England 

 and Wales alone, a quarter of a million of new souls. Taken in connec- 

 tion with the dictum of Mr, Carlyle, that this annual increment to 

 our population are " mostly fools," but little profit to the human heart 

 seems derivable from this mode of regarding the Divine operations. 



But if the Jesuit notion be rejected, what are we to accept ? 

 Physiologists say that every human being comes from an egg^ not 

 more than y l^th of an inch in diameter. Is this egg matter ? I hold 

 it to be so, as much as the seed of a fern or of an oak. Nine months 

 go to the making of it into a man. Are the additions made during 

 this period of gestation drawn from matter ? I think so undoubtedly. 

 If there be anv thing besides matter in the egg, or in the infant sub- 

 sequently slumbering in the womb, what is it ? The questions already 

 asked with reference to the stars of snow may be here repeated, Mr. 

 Martineau will complain that I am disenchanting the babe of its 

 wonder; but is this the case? I figure it growing in the womb, 

 woven by a sometiiing not itself, without conscious participation on 

 the part of either father or mother, and appearing in due time, a living 

 miracle, with all its organs and all their implications. Consider the 

 work accomplished during these nine months in forming the eye alone 



' King Maximilian II. brought Liebig to Munich ; he helped Ilelmholtz in his re- 

 searches, and loved to liberate and foster science. But he did far more damage to the 

 intellectual freedom of his coimtry through his concession of power to the Jesuits in the 

 schools, than his superstitious predecessor Ludwig I. Priding himself on being a German 

 prince, Ludwig would not tolerate the interference of the Roman party with the political 

 affairs of Bavaria. 



