416 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



the assumption of knowledge which must long, if not 

 always, lie beyond us, and the claim to which is a source 

 of perpetual confusion.' At the same time, when I look 

 with strenuous gaze into, the whole problem as far as my 

 capacities allow, overwhelming wonder is the predomi-j 

 nant feeling. This wonder has come to me from the- 

 ages just as much as my understanding, and it has an 

 equal right to satisfaction. Hence I say, if, abandoning 

 your illegitimate claim to knowledge, you place, with 

 Job, your forehead in the dust and acknowledge the 

 authorship of this universe to be past finding out if, 

 having made this confession, and relinquished the views 

 of the mechanical theologian, you desire for the satis- 

 faction of feelings which I admit to be, in great part, 

 those of humanity at large, to give ideal form to the 

 Power that moves all things it is not by me that you 

 will find objections raised to this exercise of ideality, 

 if it be only consciously and worthily carried out. 



Again, I think Professor Virchow's position, in re- 

 gard to the question of contctgium animaMm, is not 

 altogether that of true philosophy. He points to the 

 antiquity of the doctrine. ' It is lost,' he says, ' in the 

 darkness of the middle ages. We have received this 

 name from our forefathers, and it already appears dis- 

 tinctly in the sixteenth century. We possess several 

 works of that time which put forward contagium ani- 

 matum as a scientific doctrine, with the same confidence, 

 with the same sort of proof, with which the u Plastidulic 

 soul " is now set forth.' 



These speculations of our forefathers ' will appeal 

 differently to different minds. By some they will be 

 dismissed with a sneer ; to others they will appeal as 

 proofs of genius on the part of those who enunciated 

 them. There are men, and by no means the minority, 



