IN ITS EMBRYONIC STATE. 265 



to his own little department, and so I will not permit you to 

 cross-examine the witnesses." " What !" rejoin the men of 

 science, " not permit us to examine our own witnesses ! — re- 

 fuse to us what you would at once concede to the cotton- 

 weaver or the calico-printer, were the question one of cotton- 

 weaving or of calico-printing ! "We are surely not much nar- 

 rower men than the man of cotton or the man of calico. It 

 is but in our own little departments that we ask to be heard." 

 " But you shall not be heard, gentlemen," says the author of 

 the " Yestiges :" " at all events, I shall not care one farthing 

 for anything you say. For observe, gentlemen, my hypothe- 

 sis is nothing without the evidence of your sciences ; and you 

 all unite, I see, in taking that evidence from me ; and so I 

 confidently raise my appeal in this matter to people who 

 know nothing about either you or your sciences. It must 

 be before another tribunal that the new philosophy is to be 

 truly and righteously judged." Alas ! what can this mean ? 

 or where are we to seek for that tribunal of last resort to 

 which this ingenious man refers with such confidence the con- 

 sideration of his case ? Can it mean, that he appeals from 

 the only class of persons qualified to judge of his facts, to a 

 class ignorant of these, but disposed by habits of previous 

 scepticism to acquiesce in his conclusions, and take his pre- 

 mises for granted ; — that he appeals from astronomers and 

 geologists to low-minded materialists and shallow phrenolo* 

 gei-s, — from phytologists and zoologists to mesmerists and 

 phreno-mesmerists ] 



I remember being much struck, several years ago, by a re- 

 mark dropped in conversation by the late Rev. Mr Stewart 

 of Cromarty, one of the most original-minded men I ever 

 knew. " In reading in my Greek New Testament this morn- 

 ing," he said, " I was curiously impressed by a thought which, 

 simple as it may seem, never occuiTcd to me before. The 

 portion which I perused was in the First Epistle of Peter ; 



