228 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



residue ; much less give us the reasons why he deems 

 them sacred. 1 His references to ' Nature,' on the other 

 hand, are magnificent tirades against Nature, intended, 

 apparently, to show the wholly abominable character of 

 man's antecedents if the theory of evolution be true. 

 Here also his mood lacks steadiness. While joyfully 

 accepting, at one place, ' the widening space, the 

 deepening vistas of time, the detected marvels of 

 physiological structure, and the rapid filling-in of the 

 missing links in the chain of organic life,' he falls, at 

 another, into lamentation and mourning over the very 

 theory which renders ' organic life ' ' a chain.' He 

 claims the largest liberality for his sect, and avows its 

 contempt for the dangers of possible discovery. But 

 immediately afterwards he damages the claim, and 

 ruins all confidence in the avowal. He professes 

 sympathy with modern Science, and almost in the same 

 breath he treats, or certainly will be understood to 

 treat, the Atomic Theory, and the doctrine of the 

 Conservation of Energy, as if they were a kind of 

 scientific thimble-riggery. 



His ardour, moreover, renders him inaccurate ; 

 causing him to see discord between scientific men 

 where nothing but harmony reigns. In his celebrated 

 Address to the Congress of German Naturforscher, 

 delivered at Leipzig, three years ago, Du Bois-Eeymond 

 speaks thus : f What conceivable connection subsists 

 between definite movements of definite atoms in my 

 brain, on the one hand, and on the other hand such 

 primordial, indefinable, undeniable, facts as these : I 



1 Mr. Martineati's use of the term 'sacred' is unintentionally 

 misleading. In his later essays we are taught that he does not 

 mean to restrict it to the Bible. He does not, however, mention 

 the ' books' beyond those of the Bible to which he would apply the 

 term. 1879. 



