494 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
certain that these views will undergo modification. But 
the point is, that, whether right or wrong, we claim the 
right to discuss them. For science, however, no ex- 
clusive claim is here made; you are not urged to erect it 
into an idol. The inexorable advance of man's under- 
standing in the path of knowledge, and those unquenchable 
claims of his moral and emotional nature, which the 
understanding can never satisfy, are here equally set forth. 
The world embraces not only a Newton, but a Shakespeare 
not only a Boyle, but a Raphael not only a Kant, but a 
Beethoven not only a Darwin, but a Carlyle. Not in 
each of these, but in all, is human nature whole. They 
are not opposed, but supplementary not mutually ex- 
clusive, but reconcilable. And if, unsatisfied with them 
all, the human mind, with the yearning of a pilgrim for 
his distant home, will still turn to the mystery from which 
it has emerged, seeking so to fashion it as to give unity to 
thought and faith; so long as this is done, not only with- 
out intolerance or bigotry of any kind, but with the 
enlightened recognition that ultimate fixity of conception 
is here unattainable, and that each succeeding age must be 
held free to fashion the mystery in accordance with its own 
needs then, casting aside all the restrictions of materialism, 
I would affirm this to be a field for the noblest exercise of 
what, in contrast with the knowing faculties, may be 
called the creative faculties of man. Here, however, I 
touch a theme too great for me to handle, but which will 
assuredly be handled by the loftiest minds, when you and 
I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted into 
the infinite azure of the past. 
CHAPTER XXXII. 
APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 1874. 
THE WORLD has been frequently informed of late that I 
have raised up against myself a host of enemies; and con- 
sidering, with few exceptions, the deliverances of the 
Press, and more particularly of the religious Press, I am 
forced to admit that the statement is only too true. I 
derive some comfort, nevertheless, from the reflection of 
Diogenes, transmitted to us by Plutarch, that "he. who 
