88 ( FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



In reality they explain nothing. The utmost he can 

 affirm is the association of two classes of phenomena, of 

 whose real bond of union he is in absolute ignorance. 

 The problem of the connection of body and soul is 

 as insoluble, in its modem form, as it was in the pre- 

 scientific ages. Phosphorus is known to enter into the 

 composition of the human brain, and a trenchant 

 German writer has exclaimed, ; Ohne Phosphor, kein 

 Gedanke ! ' That may or may not be the case ; but 

 even if we knew it to be the case, the knowledge would 

 not lighten our darkness. On both sides of the zone 

 here assigned to the materialist he is equally helpless. 

 If you ask him whence is this ' Matter ' of which we 

 have been discoursing who or what divided it into 

 molecules, who or what impressed upon them this 

 necessity of running into organic forms he has no 

 answer. Science is mute in reply to these questions. 

 But if the materialist is confounded and science 

 rendered dumb, who else is prepared with a solution ? 

 To whom has this arm of the. Lord been revealed? 

 Let us lower our heads, and acknowledge our ignorance, 

 priest and philosopher, one and all. 



Perhaps the mystery may resolve itself into know- 

 ledge at some future day. The process of things upon 

 this earth has been one of amelioration. It is a long 

 way from the Iguanodon and his contemporaries, to the 

 President and Members of the British Association. 

 And whether we regard the improvement from the 

 scientific or from the theological point of view as the 

 result of progressive development, or of successive 

 exhibitions of creative energy neither view entitles us 

 to assume that man's present faculties end the series, 

 that the process of amelioration ends with him. A 

 time may therefore come when this ultra-scientific 

 region, by which we are now enfolded, may offer itself 



