CHAP. xxiv. WITH BREAKS IN THE SEEIES. 503 



man acquire the spiritual part of his being, and become en 

 dowed with the awful attribute of immortality ? ' * 



Before we raise objections of this kind to a scientific hy 

 pothesis, it would be well to pause and enquire whether there 

 are no analogous enigmas in the constitution of the world 

 around us, some of which present even greater difficulties than 

 that here stated. When we contemplate, for example, the 

 many hundred millions of human beings who now people the 

 earth, we behold thousands who are doomed to helpless im 

 becility, and we may trace an insensible gradation between 

 them and the half-witted, and from these again to individuals 

 of perfect understanding, so that tens of thousands must 

 have existed in the course of ages, who in their moral and 

 intellectual condition, have exhibited a passage from the ir 

 rational to the rational, or from the irresponsible to the 

 responsible. Moreover it has recently been ascertained by 

 the statistics of our metropolis, a city falling by no means 

 below the average standard in regard to health, that one 

 fourth of all the infants which are born, die before they are a 

 month old ; so that we may safely affirm that millions perish 

 on the earth in every century, in the first few hours of their 

 existence. To assign to such individuals their appropriate 

 psychological place in the creation, is one of the unprofitable 

 themes on which theologians and metaphysicians have ex 

 pended much ingenious speculation. 



The philosopher, without ignoring these difficulties, does 

 not allow them to disturb his conviction that ' whatever is, is 

 right,' nor do they check his hopes and aspirations in regard 

 to the high destiny of his species ; but he also feels that it is 

 not for one who is so often confounded by the painful reali 

 ties of the present, to test the probability of theories respecting 

 the past, by their agreement or want of agreement with some 



* Physical Theories of the Phenomena of Life, Frazer's Magazine, July 1860, 

 p. 88. 



