396 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
sun. It is the sun that separates the carbon from the 
oxygen of the carbonic acid, and thus enables them to 
recombine. Whether they recombine in the furnace of the 
steam-engine or in the animal body, the origin of the 
power they produce is the same. In this sense we are all 
" souls of fire and children of the sun." But, as remarked 
by Helmholtz, we must be content to share our celestial 
pedigree with the meanest of living things. 
Some estimable persons, here present, very possibly 
shrink from accepting these statements; they may be 
frightened by their apparent tendency toward what is 
called materialism a word which, to many minds expresses 
something very dreadful. But it ought to be known and 
avowed that the physical philosopher, as such, must be a 
pure materialist. His inquiries deal with matter and force, 
and with them alone. And whatever be the forms which 
matter and force assume, whether in the organic world or 
the inorganic, whether in the coal-beds and forests of the 
earth, or in the brains and muscles of men, the physical 
philosopher will make good his right to investigate them. 
It is perfectly vain to attempt to stop inquiry in this direc- 
tion. Depend upon it, if a chemist by bringing the proper 
materials together, in a retort or crucible, could- make a 
baby, he would do it. There is no law, moral or physical, 
forbidding him to do it. At the present moment there are, 
no doubt, persons experimenting on the possibility of pro- 
ducing what we call life out of inorganic materials. Let 
them pursue their studies in peace; it is only by such 
trials that they will learn the limits of their own powers 
and the operation of the laws of matter and force. 
But while thus making the largest demand for freedom 
of investigation while I consider science to be alike power- 
ful as an instrument of intellectual culture and as a min- 
istrant to the material wants of men; if you ask me 
whether it has solved, or is likely in our day to solve, the 
problem of this universe, I must shake my head in doubt. 
You remember the first Napoleon's question, when the 
savans who accompanied him to Egypt discussed in his 
presence the origin of the universe, and solved it to their 
own apparent satisfaction. He looked aloft to the starry 
heavens, and said, " It is all very well, gentlemen; but who 
made these?" That question still remains unanswered, 
and science makes no attempt to answer it. As far as I 
