396 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



range in some respects and directions, and his power- 

 lessness to take a single step in others. In 1868, 

 before the Mathematical and Physical Section of the 

 British Association, then assembled at Norwich, I repeat 

 the same well-worn note : 



' In thus affirming the growth of the human body 

 to be mechanical, and thought as exercised by us to have 

 its correlative in the physics of the brain, the position of 

 the " materialist," as far as that position is tenable, is 

 stated. I think the materialist will be able finally to 

 maintain this position against all attacks, but I do not 

 think he can pass beyond it. The problem of the con- 

 nection of body and soul is as insoluble in its modern 

 $orm as it was in the pre-scientific ages. Phosphorus 

 is a constituent 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 mole- 

 cules, and impressed upon them this necessity of run- 

 ning into organic forms he has no answer. Science is 

 also mute in regard to such questions. But if the 

 materialist is confounded and science is rendered dumb, 

 who else is prepared with an answer ? Let us lower our 

 heads and acknowledge our ignorance, priest and philo- 

 sopher, one and all.' 



The roll of echoes which succeeded the Lecture 

 delivered by Professor Virchow at Munich on September 

 22, 1877, was long and loud. The < Times ' published a 

 nearly full translation of the lecture, and it was eagerly 

 commented on in other journals. Glances from it to an 



