166 FKAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



immortal reason, by its mischievous activity in oper- 

 ating upon a broken instrument, must have the credit 

 of committing every imaginable extravagance and 

 crime. I think, if you will allow me to say so, that the 

 gravest consequences are likely to flow from your esti- 

 mate of the body. To regard the brain as you would 

 a staff or an eyeglass to shut your eyes to all its mys- 

 tery, to the perfect correlation of its condition and our 

 consciousness, to the fact that a slight excess or defect 

 of blood in it produces the very swoon to which you re- 

 fer, and that in relation to it our meat, and drink, and 

 air, and exercise, have a perfectly transcendental value 

 and significance to forget all this does, I think, open 

 a way to innumerable errors in our habits of life, and 

 may possibly, in some cases, initiate and foster that 

 very disease, and consequent mental ruin, which a 

 wiser appreciation of this mysterious organ would have 

 avoided/ 



I can imagine the Bishop thoughtful after hearing 

 this argument. He was not the man to allow anger to 

 mingle with the consideration of a point of this kind. 

 After due reflection, and having strengthened himself 

 by that honest contemplation of the facts which was 

 habitual with him, and which includes the desire to 

 give even adverse reasonings their due weight, I can 

 suppose the Bishop to proceed thus: ' You will remem- 

 ber that in the " Analogy of Keligion," of which you 

 have so kindly spoken, I did not profess to prove any- 

 thing absolutely, and that I over and over again acknow- 

 ledged and insisted on the smallness of our knowledge, 

 or rather the depth of our ignorance, as regards the 

 whole system of the universe. My object was to show 

 my deistical friends, who set forth so eloquently the 

 beauty and beneficence of Nature and the Euler there- 

 of, while they had nothing but scorn for the so-called 



