xn.] MODEBN PHAEISEES AXD SADDUCEES. 295 



(as one had fancied them) become nnable to examine 

 fairly into a thing, the moment the desire to believe 

 has entered the heart; and how no amount of mere 

 cultivation, if the scientific habit of mind be wanting", 

 can prevent people from finding (as in table-turning) 

 miracles in the most simple mechanical accidents ; or 

 from becoming (as in spirit-rapping) the dupes of the 

 most clumsy, palpable, and degrading impostures, 

 even after they have been exposed over and over 

 again in print. Humiliating, indeed, it is, in this so 

 self-confident and boastful nineteenth century, amid 

 steam-engines, railroads, electric telegraphs, and all 

 the wonders of our inductive science, to find exploded 

 superstitions leaping back into life even more mon- 

 strous and irrational than in past ages, and to see our 

 modern Pharisees and Sadducees, like those in Judea 

 of old, seeking after a sign of an unseen world ; and 

 being unable to find one either in the heaven above or 

 in the earth beneath, discovering it at last (I am 

 almost ashamed to speak the words) under the parlour- 

 table. 



Against such extravagances, and against the loose 

 sentimental tone of mind which begets them, hardly 

 anything would be a better safeguard than the habitual 

 study of nature. The chemist, the geologist, the 

 botanist, the zoologist, has to deal with facts which 

 will make him master of them, and of himself, only in 

 proportion as he obeys them. Many of you doubtless 

 know Lord Bacon's famous apothegm, Nature is only 

 conquered by obeying her; and will understand me 

 when I say, that you cannot understand, much less 

 use for scientific purposes, the meanest pebble, unless 

 you first obey that pebble. Paradoxical; but true. 



