THE REV. JAMES MARTINEAU. 513 
besom of Science various " books'" contemptuously away, 
he does not define the Sacred residue; much less give us 
the reasons why he deems them sacred.* His references 
to " Nature," on the other hand, are magnificent tirades 
against Nature, intended, apparently, to show the wholly 
abominable character of man's antecedents if the theory of 
evolution be true. Here also his mood lacks steadiness. 
While joyfully accepting, at one place, " the widening 
space, the deepening vistas of time, the detected marvels 
of physiological structure, and the rapid filling-in of the 
missing links in the chain of organic life," he falls, at 
another, into lamentation and mourning over the very 
theory which renders "organic life" "a chain." He 
claims the largest liberality for his sect, and avows its con- 
tempt for the dangers of possible discovery. But imme- 
diately afterward he damages the claim, and ruins all 
confidence in the avowal. He professes sympathy with 
modern Science, and almost in the same breath he treats, 
or certainly will be understood to treat, the Atomic Theory, 
and the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy, as if they 
were a kind of scientific thimble-riggery. 
His ardor, moreover, renders him inaccurate; causing 
him to see.discord between scientific men where nothing 
but harmony reigns. In his celebrated address to the 
Congress of German Naturforscher, delivered at Leipzig, 
three years ago, Du Bois-Keymond speaks thus: " What 
co-nceivable connection subsists between definite movements 
of definite atoms in my brain, on the one hand, and on 
the other hand such primordial, indefinable, undeniable, 
facts as these: I feel pain or pleasure; I experience a 
sweet taste, or smell a rose, or hear an organ, or see some- 
thing red. ... It is absolutely and forever inconceivable 
that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen 
atoms should be otherwise than indifferent as to their"own 
position and motion, past, present, or future. It is utterly 
inconceivable how consciousness should result from their 
joint action." 
This language, which was spoken in 1872, Mr. Martineau 
* Mr. Martineau's use of tlie term " sacred " is unintentionally mis- 
leading. In his later essays we are taught that he does not mean to 
restrict it to the Bible. He does not, however, mention the " books " 
beyond those of the Bible to which he would apply the term. 
1879. 
