514 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
" freely " translates, and quotes against me. The act is 
due to misapprehension. Evidence is at hand to prove 
that I employed similar language twenty years ago. It is 
to be fonnd in the Saturday Review for 1860; bnt a 
sufficient illustration of the agreement between my friend 
Du Bois-Reymond and myself is furnished by the discourse 
on " Scientific Materialism," delivered in 1868, then 
widely circulated, and reprinted here. The reader who 
compares the two discourses will see that the same line of 
thought is pursued in both, and that perfect agreement 
reigns between my friend and me. In the very address he 
criticises, Mr. Martineau might have seen that precisely 
the same position is maintained. A quotation will prove 
this: "Thus far/' I say, "our way is clear, but now 
cornes my difficulty. Your atoms are individually without 
sensation, much more are they without intelligence. May 
I ask you, then, to try your hand upon this problem? 
Take your dead hydrogen atoms, your dead oxygen atoms, 
your dead carbon atoms, your dead nitrogen atoms, your 
dead phosphorus atoms, and all the other atoms, dead as 
grains of shot, of which the brain is formed. Imagine 
them separate and sensationless; observe them running 
together and forming all imaginable combinations. This, 
as a purely mechanical process, i&.eeable by the mind. 
But can you see, or dream, or in any way imagine, how 
ort of that mechanical act, and from these individually 
dead atoms, sensation, thought, and emotion are to rise? 
Are you likely to extract Homer out of the rattling of dice, 
or the Differential Calculus out of the clash of billiard 
balls? ... I can follow a particle of musk until it reaches 
the olfactory nerve; I can follow the waves of sound until 
their tremors reach the water of the labyrinth, and set the 
otoliths and Corti's fibers in motion; I can also visualize 
the waves of ether as they cross the eye and hit the retina. 
Nay, more, I am able to pursue to the central organ the 
motion thus imparted at the periphery, and to see in idea 
the very molecules of the brain thrown into tremors. My 
insight is not baffled by these physical processes. What 
baffles and bewilders me is the notion that from these phys- 
ical tremors things so utterly incongruous with them as 
sensation, thought, and emotion can be derived." It is 
only a complete misapprehension of our true relationship 
that could induce Mr. Martineau to represent Du Bois- 
Keymond and myself as opposed to each other. 
