SCIENTIFIC MA TEIIIALISM. 409 



Musings on the Matterhorn, July 37, 1868. 



Hacked and hurt by time, the aspect of the mountain 

 from its higher crags saddened me. Hitherto the impres- 

 sion it made was that of savage strength; here we had 

 inexorable decay. But this notion of decay implied a 

 reference to a period when the Matterhorn was in the 

 full strength of mountainhood. Thought naturally ran 

 back to its remoter origin and sculpture. Nor did thought 

 halt there, but wandered on through molten worlds to that 

 nebulous haze which philosophers have regarded, and with 

 good reason, as the proximate source of all material things. 

 1 tried to look at this universal cloud, containing within 

 itself the prediction of all that has since occurred; I tried 

 to imagine it as the seat of those forces whose action was to 

 issue in solar and stellar systems, and all that they involve. 

 Did that formless fog contain potentially the sadness with 

 which I regarded the Matterhorn? Did the thought which 

 now ran back to it simply return to its primeval home? 

 If so, had we not better recast our definitions of matter 

 and force? for, if life and thought be the very flower of 

 both, any definition which omits life and thought must be 

 inadequate, if not untrue. Are questions like these war- 

 ranted? Why not? If the final goal of man has not been 

 yet attained; if his development has not been yet arrested, 

 who can say that such yearnings and questionings are not 

 necessary to the opening of a finer vision, to the budding 

 and the growth of diviner powers? When I look at the 

 heavens and the earth, at my own body, at my strength 

 and weakness, even at these ponderings, and ask myself, Is 

 there no being or thing in the universe that knows more 

 about these matters than 1 do; what is my answer? Sup- 

 posing our theologic schemes of creation, condemnation, 

 and redemption to be dissipated; and the warmth of 

 denial which they excite, and which, as a motive force, can 

 match the warmth of affirmation, dissipated at the same 

 time; would the undeflected human mind return to the 

 meridian of absolute neutrality as regards these ultra- 

 physical questions? Is such a position one of stable equili- 

 brium? The channels of thought being already formed, 

 such are the questions, without replies, which could run 

 athwart consciousness during a ten minutes' halt upon the 

 weathered crest of the Matterhorn. 



