208 THE LAW. 



dise 1 " For hypotheses such as these, however curious or 

 startling they may appear, let it be clearly understood that 

 science is in no way responsible. Xo observation from the 

 external world no analogy, however plausible no analy- 

 sis, however minute can ever solve the problem of an im- 

 material and immortal existence. They may be received as 

 possible or probable auxiliaries, but in the main our faith 

 on this point must rest, as it has hitherto rested, 011 an 

 altogether different foundation. Science has its own line 

 and limit of inquiry, and no satisfactory result can ever 

 arise from any attempt to carry it beyond the boundary of 

 the philosophically attainable. If the developists have 

 failed on physical grounds to prove a genetic unity for the 

 various grades of organisation, their opponents only compli- 

 cate the question by the unnecessary introduction of the 

 still more difficult problem of a spiritual community. 



[Acceptance of Vital Hypotheses.] 



While repudiating this doctrine of physical development, 

 we would treat its advocacy without that acrimony and in- 

 vective which has been too frequently displayed against it. 

 The progress and gradation of vitality is still in a great 

 measure a mystery to science ; and any honest and earnest 

 endeavour to unveil it should ever meet with a correspond- 

 ing regard. In the organic as in the inorganic world the 

 Creator often operates through secondary causes, and the 

 discovery of these causes, in the spirit of true philosophy, is 

 to human reason a duty as well as a privilege. Every re- 

 sult that meets the senses, every phenomenon that nature 

 presents to us, becomes the legitimate subject of scientific 

 research ; and subtle as the eliminations of Life may be, 

 mysterious as its ordainings may appear, there is clearly 



