248 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



keep a sharp lookout on all temerities of this kind; and 

 their organ, the ' Civilita Cattolica/ immediately 

 pounced upon Frohschammer. His book was branded 

 as ' pestilent/ placed in the Index, and stamped with 

 the condemnation of the Church.* The Jesuit notion 

 does not err on the score of indefiniteness. According 

 to it, the Power whom Goethe does not dare to name, 

 and whom Gassendi and Clerk Maxwell present to us 

 under the guise of a ' Manufacturer ' of atoms, turns 

 out annually, for England and Wales alone, a quarter 

 of a million of new souls. Taken in connection with 

 the dictum of Mr. Carlyle, that this annual increment 

 to our population are ' mostly fools/ but little profit to 

 the human heart seems derivable from this mode of 

 regarding the Divine operations. 



But if the Jesuit notion be rejected, what are we to 

 accept? Physiologists say that every human being 

 comes from an egg not more than the -j-|~oth ^ an 

 inch in diameter. Is this egg matter? I hold it to be 

 so, as much as the seed of a fern or of an oak. Nine 

 months go to the making of it into a man. Are the 

 additions made during this period of gestation drawn 

 from matter? I think so undoubtedly. If there be 

 anything besides matter in the egg, or in the infant 

 subsequently slumbering in the womb, what is it? The 

 questions already asked with reference to the stars of 

 snow may be here repeated. Mr. Martineau will com- 

 plain that I am disenchanting the babe of its wonder; 

 but is this the case? I figure it growing in the womb, 



* King Maximilian TI. brought Liebig to Munich, he helped 

 Helraholtz in his researches, and loved to liberate and foster sci- 

 ence. But through his liberal concession of power to the Jesuits 

 in the schools, he did far more damage to the intellectual freedom 

 of his country than his superstitious predecessor Ludwig I. Priding 

 himself on being a German Prince, Ludwig would not tolerate the 

 interference of the Roman party with the political affairs of Bavaria. 



