196 FKAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



strong as those of the understanding itself. It is a 

 result, for example, of the play of organism and en- 

 vironment that sugar is sweet, and that aloes are bitter; 

 that the smell of henbane differs from the perfume of 

 a rose. Such facts of consciousness (for which, by the 

 way, no adequate reason has ever been rendered) are 

 quite as old as the understanding; and many other 

 things can boast an equally ancient origin. Mr. Spencer 

 at one place refers to that most powerful of passions 

 the amatory passion^ as one which, when it first oc- 

 curs, is antecedent to all relative experience what- 

 ever; and we may press its claim as being at least as 

 ancient, and as valid, as that of the understanding itself. 

 Then there are such things woven into the texture of 

 man as the feeling of Awe, Eeverence, Wonder and 

 not alone the sexual love just referred to, but the love 

 of the beautiful, physical, and moral, in Nature, 

 Poetry, and Art. There is also that deep-set feeling, 

 which, since the earliest dawn of history, and probably 

 for ages prior to all history, incorporated itself in the 

 Eeligions of the world. You, who have escaped from 

 these religions into the high-and-dry light of the in- 

 tellect, may deride them; but in so doing you deride 

 accidents of form merely, and fail to touch the im- 

 movable basis of the religious sentiment in the nature 

 of man. To yield this sentiment reasonable satisfaction 

 is the problem of problems at the present hour. And 

 grotesque in relation to scientific culture as many of 

 the religions of the world have been and are danger- 

 ous, nay, destructive, to the dearest privileges of free- 

 men as some of them undoubtedly have been, and 

 would, if they could, be again it will be wise to recog- 

 nise them as the forms of a force, mischievous if per- 

 mitted to intrude on the region of objective knowledge, 

 over which it holds no command, but capable of add- 



