414 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



above, and around us the real mystery of the universe lies 

 unsolved, and, as far as we are concerned, is incapable 

 of solution. 



While refreshing my mind on these old themes I ap- 

 pear to myself as a person possessing one idea, which so 

 overmasters him that he is never weary of repeating it. 

 That idea is the polar conception of the grandeur and the 

 littleness of man the vastness of his range in some re- 

 spects and directions, and his powerlessness to take a 

 single step in others. In 1868, before the Mathematical 

 and Physical Section of the British Association, then 

 assembled at Norwich, 1 repeat the same well-worn note: 



1 'In thus affirming the growth of the human body to 

 be mechanical, and thought as exercised by us to have its 

 correlative in the physics of the brain, the position of the 

 4 materialist/ as far as that position is tenable, is stated. 

 I think the materialist will be able finally to maintain this 

 position against all attacks, but I do not think he can 

 pass beyond it. The problem of the connection of body 

 and soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in 

 the pre-scientific ages. Phosphorus is a constituent of the 

 human brain, and a trenchant German writer has ex- 

 claimed, 'Ohne Phosphor kein gedanke!' That may or 

 may not be the case; but, even if we knew it to be the 

 case, the knowledge would not lighten our darkness. On 

 both sides of the zone here assigned to the materialist he 

 is equally helpless. If you ask him whence is this 'mat- 

 ter* of which we have been discoursing who or what 

 divided it into molecules, and impressed upon them this 

 necessity of running into organic forms he has no answer. 

 Science is also mute in regard to such questions. But if 

 the materialist is confounded and science is rendered 



