382 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



undoubtedly a modification of human flesh, and the 

 persons who fed upon them were as undoubtedly, in 

 part, a more remote modification of the same substance. 

 I figured the self-same molecules as belonging first to 

 one body and afterwards to a different one, and I asked 

 myself how two bodies so related could possibly arrange 

 their claims at the day of resurrection. The scattered 

 parts of each were to be reassembled and set as they 

 were. But if handed over to the one, how could they 

 possibly enter into the composition of the other? Om- 

 nipotence itself, I concluded, could not reconcile the 

 contradiction. Thus the plank which Blair's mechan- 

 ical theory of the resurrection brought momentarily 

 into sight, disappeared, and I was again cast abroad on 

 the waste ocean of speculation. 



At the same time I could by no means get rid of the 

 idea that the aspects of nature and the consciousness of 

 man implied the operation of a power altogether beyond 

 my grasp an energy the thought of which raised the 

 temperature of the mind, though it refused to accept 

 shape, personal or otherwise, from the intellect. Per- 

 haps the able critics of the * Saturday Review ' are justi- 

 fied in speaking as they sometimes do of Mr. Carlyle. 

 They owe him nothing, and have a right to announce 

 -the fact in their own way. I, however, owe him a great 

 deal, and am also in honour bound to acknowledge the 

 debt. Few, perhaps, who are privileged to come into 

 contact with that illustrious man have shown him a 

 sturdier front than I have, or in discussing modern sci- 

 ence have more frequently withstood him. But I could 

 see that his contention at bottom always was that the hu- 

 man soul has claims and yearnings which physical sci- 

 ence cannot satisfy. England to come will assuredly 

 thank him for his affirmation of the ethical and ideal 

 side of human nature. Be this as it may, at the period 



