642 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
correlative in the physics of the brain, the position of the 
' Materialist/ as far as that position is tenable, is stated. 
I think the materialist will be able finally to maintain this 
position against all attacks, but I do not think he can pass 
beyond it. The problem of the connection of body and 
soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in the pre- 
scientific ages. Phosphorus is a constituent of the human 
brain, and a trenchant German writer has exclaimed, 
' Ohne Phosphor kein gedanke! ' That may or may not 
be the case; but, even if we knew it to be the case, the 
knowledge would not lighten our darkness. On both sides 
of the zone here assigned to the materialist he is equally 
helpless. If you ask him whence is this 'matter' of 
which we have been discoursing who or what divided it 
into molecules, and impressed upon them this necessity of 
running into organic forms he has no answer. Science is 
also mute in regard to such questions. But if the materi- 
alist is confounded and science is rendered dumb, who else 
is prepared with an answer? Let us lower our heads and 
acknowledge our ignorance, priest and philosopher, one 
and all." 
The roll of echoes which succeeded the lecture delivered 
by Professor Virchow at Munich on September 22, 1877, 
was long and loud. The Times published a nearly full 
translation of the lecture, and it was eagerly commented 
on in other journals. Glances from it to an address 
delivered by me before the Midland Institute in the 
autumn of 1877, and published in this volume, were very 
frequent. Professor Virchow was held up to me in some 
quarters as a model of philosophic cnution, who by his 
reasonableness reproved my rashness, and by his depth 
reproved my shallovvness. With true theologic courtesy I 
was sedulously emptied, not only of the "principles of 
scientific thought," but of " common modesty " and " com- 
mon sense." And though I am indebted to Professor 
Clifford for recalling in the Nineteenth Century for 
April the public mind in this connection from heated fancy 
to sober fact, I do not think a brief additional examination 
of Virchow's views, and of my relation to them, will be out 
of place here. 
The keynote of his position is struck in the preface to 
the excellent English translation of his lecture a preface 
