246 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



thought so much, and failed to recognize the entirely sub- 

 jective character of this creed, is highly instructive. His 

 "proper organs of divine apprehension" given, we must 

 assume, to Mr. Martineau and his pupils, but denied to 

 many of the greatest intellects and noblest men in this 

 and other ages lie at the very core of his emotions. 



In fact, it is when Mr. Martineau is most purely emo- 

 tional that he scorns the emotions; it is when he is most 

 purely subjective that he rejects subjectivity. He pays a 

 just and liberal tribute to the character of John Stuart 

 Mill. But in the light of Mill's philosophy, benevolence, 

 honor, purity, having "shrunk into mere unaccredited sub- 

 jective susceptibilities, have lost all support from Omnis- 

 cient approval, and all presumable accordance with the 

 reality of things.'* If Mr. Martineau had given them any 

 inkling of the process by which he renders the "subjec- 

 tive susceptibilities" objective, or how he arrives at an 

 objective ground of "Omniscient approval," gratitude from 

 his pupils would have been his just meed. But, as it is, 

 ne leaves them lost in an iridescent cloud of words, after 

 exciting a desire which he is incompetent to appease. 



"We are," he says, in another place, "forever shaping 

 our representations of invisible things into forms of defi- 

 nite opinion, and throwing them to the front, as if they 

 were the photographic equivalent of our real faith. It is 

 a delusion which affects us all. Yet somehow the essence 

 of our religion never finds its way into these frames of 

 theory: as we put them together it slips away, and, if we 

 turn to pursue it, still retreats behind ; ever ready to work 

 with the will, to unbind and sweeten the affections, and 

 bathe the life with reverence, but refusing to be seen, or 

 to pass from a divine hue of thinking into a human pat- 



