THE BELFAST ADDRESS 208 



in the face. Divorced from matter, where is life ? What- 

 ever our faith may say, our knowledge shows them to be indis- 

 solubly joined. Every meal we eat, and every cup we drink, 

 illustrates the mysterious control of Mind by Matter. 



On tracing the line of life backward, we see it ap- 

 proaching more and more to what we call the purely 

 physical condition. We come at length to those organ- 

 isms which I have compared to drops of oil suspended 

 in a mixture of alcohol and water. We reach the pro- 

 togenes of Haeckel, in which we have "a type distinguish- 

 able from a fragment of albumen only by its finely granu- 

 lar character." Can we pause here? We break a magnet, 

 and find two poles in each of its fragments. We continue 

 the process of breaking; but, however small the parts, 

 each carries with it, though enfeebled, the polarity of the 

 whole. And when we can 'break no longer, we prolong 

 the intellectual vision to the polar molecules. Are we not 

 urged to do something similar in the case of life? Is 

 there not a temptation to close to some extent with Lu- 

 cretius, when he affirms that "Nature is seen to do all 

 things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of 

 the gods?" or with Bruno, when he declares that Matter 

 is not "that mere empty capacity which philosophers have 

 pictured her to be, but the universal mother who brings 

 forth all things as the fruit of her own womb?" Believ- 

 ing, as I do, in the continuity of nature, I cannot stop 

 abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use. Here 

 the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements the 

 vision of the eye. By a necessity engendered and justi- 

 fied by science I cross the boundary of the experimental 

 evidence, 1 and discern in that Matter which we, in our 



1 This mode of procedure was not invented in Belfast. 



