170 FBAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



the Italian Universities wished to know the leanings 

 of a new Professor, they at once requested him to 

 lecture upon the soul. About the time of Bishop 

 Butler the question was not only agitated but extended. 

 It was seen by the clear-witted men who entered this 

 arena, that many of their best arguments applied 

 equally to brutes and men. The Bishop's arguments 

 were of this character. He saw it, admitted it, took 

 the consequence, and boldly embraced the whole ani- 

 mal world in his scheme of immortality. 



Bishop Butler accepted with unwavering trust the 

 chronology of the Old Testament, describing it as 

 ' confirmed by the natural and civil history of the world, 

 collected from common historians, from the state of 

 the earth, and from the late inventions of arts and 

 sciences.' These words mark progress; and they must 

 seem somewhat hoary to the Bishop's successors of to- 

 day. It is hardly necessary to inform you that since 

 his time the domain of the naturalist has been im- 

 mensely extended the whole science of geology, with 

 its astonishing revelations regarding the life of the an- 

 cient earth, having been created. The rigidity of 

 old conceptions has been relaxed, the public mind be- 

 ing rendered gradually tolerant of the idea that not for 

 six thousand, nor for sixty thousand, nor for six thou- 

 sand thousand, but for asons embracing untold millions 

 of years, this earth has been the theatre of life and 

 death. The riddle of the rocks has been read by the 

 geologist and palaeontologist, from sub-cambrian depths 

 to the deposits thickening over the sea-bottoms of to- 

 day. And upon the leaves of that stone book are, as 

 you know, stamped the characters, plainer and surer 



