88 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



tion. I do not think he is entitled to say that his mo- 

 lecular groupings, and motions, explain everything. 

 In reality they explain nothing. The utmost he can 

 affirm is the association of two classes of phenomena, of 

 whose real hond of union he is in absolute ignorance. 

 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 known to enter into the 

 composition 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, who or what impressed upon them this 

 necessity of running into organic forms he has no 

 answer. Science is mute in reply to these questions. 

 But if the materialist is confounded and science ren- 

 dered dumb, who else is prepared with a solution? 

 To whom has this arm of the Lord been revealed? 

 Let us lower our heads, and acknowledge our igno- 

 rance, priest and philosopher, one and all. 



Perhaps the mystery may resolve itself into knowl- 

 edge at some future day. The process of things upon 

 this earth has been one of amelioration. It is a long 

 way from the Iguanodon and his contemporaries, to 

 the President and Members of the British Asso- 

 ciation. And whether we regard the improvement 

 from the scientific or from the theological point of view 

 as the result of progressive development, or of suc- 

 cessive exhibitions of creative energy neither view en- 

 titles us to assume that man's present faculties end 

 the series, that the process of amelioration ends with 



