SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 409 
Musings on the Matterhorn, July 27, 1868. 
Hacked and hurt by time, the aspect of the mountain 
from its higher crags saddened me. Hitherto the impres- 
sion it made was that of savage strength; here we had 
inexorable decay. But this notion of decay implied a 
reference to a period when the Matterhorn was in the 
full strength of moimtainhood. Thought naturally ran 
back to its remoter origin and sculpture. Nor did thought 
halt there, but wandered on through molten worlds to that 
nebulous haze which philosophers have regarded, and with 
good reason, as the proximate source of all material things. 
I tried to look at this universal cloud, containing within 
itself the prediction of all that has since occurred; I tried 
to imagine it as the seat of those forces whose action was to 
issue in solar and stellar systems, and all that they involve. 
Did that formless fog contain potentially the sadness with 
which I regarded the Matterhorn? Did the thought which 
now ran back to it simply return to its primeval home? 
If so, had we not better recast our definitions of matter 
and force? for, if life and thought be the very flower of 
both, any definition which omits life and thought must be 
inadequate, if not untrue. Are questions like these war- 
ranted? Why not? If the final goal of man has not been 
yet attained; if his development has not been yet arrested, 
who can say that such yearnings and questionings are not 
necessary to the opening of a finer vision, to the budding 
and the growth of diviner powers? When I look at the 
heavens and the earth, at my own body, at my strength 
and weakness, even at these ponderings, and ask myself, Is 
there no being or thing in the universe that knows more 
about these matters than I do; what is my answer? Sup- 
posing our theologic schemes of creation, condemnation, 
and redemption to be dissipated; and the warmth of 
denial which they excite, and which, as a motive force, can 
match the warmth of affirmation, dissipated at the same 
time; would the undeflected human mind return to the 
meridian of absolute neutrality as regards these ultra- 
physical questions? Is such a position one of stable equili- 
brium? The channels of thought being already formed, 
such are the questions, without replies, which could run 
athwart consciousness during a ten minutes' halt upon the 
weathered crest of the Matterhorn. 
