226 FKAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



sacred.* His references to ' Nature/ on the other 

 hand, are magnificent tirades against Nature, intended, 

 apparently, to show the wholly abominable character 

 of man's antecedents if the theory of evolution be true. 

 Here also his mood lacks steadiness. While joyfully 

 accepting, at one place, ' the widening space, the deep- 

 ening vistas of time, the detected marvels of physio- 

 logical structure, and the rapid filling-in of the missing 

 links in the chain of organic life/ he falls, at another, 

 into lamentation and mourning over the very theory 

 which renders * organic life ' a ' chain.' He claims 

 the largest liberality for his sect, and avows its con- 

 tempt for the dangers of possible discovery. But im- 

 mediately afterwards he damages the claim, and ruins 

 all confidence in the avowal. He professes sympathy 

 with modern Science, and almost in the same breath 

 he treats, or certainly will be understood to treat, the 

 Atomic Theory, and the doctrine of the Conservation 

 of Energy, as if they were a kind of scientific thimble- 

 riggery. 



His ardour, moreover, renders him inaccurate; 

 causing him to see discord between scientific men 

 where nothing but harmony reigns. In his celebrated 

 Address to the Congress of German Naturforscher, de- 

 livered at Leipzig, three years ago, Du Bois-Eeymond 

 speaks thus: ' What conceivable connection subsists be- 

 tween definite movements of definite atoms in my brain, 

 on the one hand, and on the other hand such primordial, 

 indefinable, undeniable, facts as these: I feel pain or 

 pleasure; I experience a sweet taste, or smell a rose, 

 or hear an organ, or see something red. . . It is ab- 



* Mr. Martineau's use of the term 'sacred' is unintentionally 

 misleading. In his later essays we are taught that he does not 

 mean to restrict it to the Bible. He does not, however, mention 

 the ' books ' beyond those of the Bible to which he would apply 

 the term. 1879. 



