132 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



Evolution notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only 

 for the intellectual gibbet, in relation to the ideas con- 

 cerning matter which were drilled into us when young. 

 Spirit and matter have ever been presented to us in 

 the rudest contrast, the one as all-noble, the other as 

 all- vile. But is this correct? Upon the answer to 

 this question all depends. Supposing that, instead of 

 having the foregoing antithesis of spirit and matter 

 presented to our youthful minds, we have 'been taught 

 to regard them as equally worthy, and equally wonder- 

 ful; to consider them, in fact, as two opposite faces of 

 the self-same mystery. Supposing that in youth we 

 had been impregnated with the notion cf the poet 

 Goethe, instead of the notion of the poet Young, and 

 taught to look upon matter, not as ' brute matter,' but 

 as the ' living garment of God; ' do you not think that 

 under these altered circumstances the law of Eelativity 

 might have had an outcome different from its present 

 one? It is not probable that our repugnance to the 

 idea of primeval union between spirit and matter might 

 be considerably abated? Without this total revolution 

 of the notions now prevalent, the Evolution hypothesis 

 must stand condemned; but in many profoundly 

 thoughtful minds such a revolution has already taken 

 place. They degrade neither member of the mysterious 

 quality referred to; but they exalt one of them from its 

 abasement, and repeal the divorce hitherto existing be- 

 tween them. In substance, if not in words, their posi- 

 tion as regards the relation of spirit and matter is: 

 What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.' 

 You have been thus led to the outer rim of specula- 

 tive science, for beyond the nebulas scientific thought 

 has never hitherto ventured. I have tried to state that 

 which I considered ought, in fairness, to be outspoken. 

 I neither think this Evolution hypothesis is to be 



