232 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



an external object of thought. When I attempt to 

 give the Power which I see manifested in the Universe 

 an objective form, personal or otherwise, it slips away 

 from me, declining all intellectual manipulation. I 

 dare not, save poetically, use the pronoun ' He ' re- 

 garding it ; I dare not call it a ' Mind ; ' I refuse to 

 call it even a ' Cause.' Its mystery overshadows me ; 

 but it remains a mystery, while the objective frames 

 which some of my neighbours try to make it fit, seem 

 to me to distort and desecrate it. 



It is otherwise with Mr. Martineau, and hence his 

 discontent. He professes to know where I only claim 

 to feel. He could make his contention good against 

 me if, by a process of verification, he would transform 

 his assumptions into * objective knowledge.' But he 

 makes no attempt to do so. They remain assumptions 

 from the beginning of his Address to its end. And yet 

 he frequently uses the word * unverified,' as if it were 

 fatal to the position on which its incidence falls. ' The 

 scrutiny of Nature ' is one of his sources of ' religious 

 faith : ' what logical foothold does that scrutiny furnish, 

 on which any one of the foregoing three assumptions 

 could be planted ? Nature, according to his picturing, 

 is base and cruel : what is the inference to be drawn 

 regarding its Author ? If Nature be ' red in tooth and 

 claw,' who is responsible ? On a Mindless nature Mr. 

 Martineau pours the full torrent of his gorgeous in- 

 vective ; but could the ' assumption ' of ' an Eternal 

 Mind ' even of a Beneficent Eternal Mind render the 

 world objectively a whit less mean and ugly than it is ?1 

 Not an iota. It is man's feelings, and not external' 

 phenomena, that are influenced by the assumption. 

 It adds not a ray of light nor a strain of music to the 

 objective sum of things. It does not touch the phe- 

 nomena of physical nature storm, flood, or fire nor 



