SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 89 



him. A time may therefore come when this ultra- 

 scientific region, by which we are now enfolded, may 

 offer itself to terrestrial, if not to human, investigation. 

 Two-thirds of the rays emitted by the sun fail to arouse 

 the sense of vision. The rays exist, but the visual 

 organ requisite for their translation into light does 

 not exist. And so from this region of darkness and 

 mystery which surrounds us, rays may now be darting, 

 which require but the development of the proper in- 

 tellectual organs to translate them into knowledge as 

 far surpassing ours, as ours surpasses that of the wal- 

 lowing reptiles which once held possession of this 

 planet. Meanwhile the mystery is not without its uses. 

 It certainly may be made a power in the human soul; 

 but it is a power which has feeling, not knowledge, for 

 its base. It'may be, will be, and I hope is turned to 

 account, both in steadying and strengthening the in- 

 tellect, and in rescuing man from that littleness to 

 which, in the struggle for existence, or for precedence 

 in the world, he is continually prone. 



Musings on the Matterhorn, July 27, 1868. 



Hacked and hurt by time, the aspect of the moun- 

 tain from its higher crags saddened me. Hitherto the 

 impression it made was that of savage strength; here 

 we had inexorable decay. But this notion of decay 

 implied a reference to a period when the Matterhorn 

 was in the full strength of mountainhood. Thought 

 naturally ran back to its remoter origin and sculpture. 

 Nor did thought halt there, but wandered on through 

 molten worlds to that nebulous haze which philoso- 

 phers have regarded, and with good reason, as the 



