REV. J. MARTTNEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 241 



"tree? If so, what, and where? Mr. Martineau may 

 have begun by this time to discern that it is not ' pic- 

 turesqueness/ but cold precision, that my Vorstel- 

 lungs-fahigkeit demands. How, I would ask, is this 

 vegetative soul to be presented to the mind? where did 

 it flourish before the tree grew? and what will become 

 of it when the tree is sawn into planks, or consumed in 

 fire? 



Possibly Mr. Martineau may consider the assump- 

 tion of this soul to be as untenable and as useless as I 

 do. But then if the power to build a tree be conceded 

 to pure matter, what an amazing expansion of our 

 notions of the ' potency of matter ' is implied in the 

 concession! Think of the acorn, of the earth, and of 

 the solar light and heat was ever such necromancy 

 dreamt of as the production of that massive trunk, 

 those swaying boughs and whispering leaves, from the 

 interaction of these three factors? In this interaction, 

 moreover, consists what we call life. It will be seen 

 that I am not in the least insensible to the wonder of 

 the tree; nay, I should not be surprised if, in the pres- 

 ence of this wonder, I feel more perplexed and over- 

 whelmed than Mr. Martineau himself. 



Consider it for a moment. There is an experiment, 

 first made by Wheatstone, where the music of a piano 

 is transferred from its sound-board, through a thin 

 wooden rod, across several silent rooms in succession, 

 and poured out at a distance from the instrument. The 

 strings of the piano vibrate, not singly, but ten at a 

 time. Every string subdivides, yielding not one note, 

 but a dozen. All these vibrations and subvibrations 

 are crowded together into a bit of deal not more than a 

 quarter of a square inch in section. Yet no note is 

 lost. Each vibration asserts its individual rights; and 

 all are, at last, shaken forth into the air by a second 



