REV. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 247 



tern of thought." This is very beautiful, and mainly so 

 because the man who utters it obviously brings it all out 

 of the treasury of his own heart. But the "hue 7 ' and 

 "pattern" here so finely spoken of, the former refusing to 

 pass into the latter, are neither more nor less than that 

 "emotion," on the one hand, and that "objective knowl- 

 edge," on the other, which have drawn this suicidal fire 

 from Mr. Martineau's battery. 



I now come to one of the most serious portions of Mr. 

 Martineau's pamphlet serious far less on account of its 

 "personal errors" than of its intrinsic gravity, though its 

 author has thought fit to give it a witty and sarcastic 

 tone. He analyzes and criticises "the materialist doctrine, 

 which, in our time, is proclaimed with so much pomp, 

 and resisted with so much passion. 'Matter is all I want,* 

 says the physicist; 'give me its atoms alone, and I will 

 explain the universe.' " It is thought, even by Mr. Mar- 

 tineau's intimate friends, that in this pamphlet he is an- 

 swering me. I must therefore ask the reader to contrast 

 the foregoing travesty with what I really do say regarding 

 atoms: "I do not think that he [the materialist] is en- 

 titled to say that his molecular groupings and motions 

 explain everything. In reality, they explain nothing. 

 The utmost he can affirm is the association of two classes 

 of phenomena, of whose real bond of union he is in ab- 

 solute ignorance." ' This is very different from saying, 

 "Give me its atoms alone, and I will explain the uni- 

 verse." Mr. Martineau continues his dialogue with the 

 physicist: " 'Good, 1 he says; 'take as many atoms as you 

 please. See that they have all that is requisite to Body 



1 Address on "Scientific Materialism." 



