438 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



system, Kant and Laplace came to the conclusion that its 

 various bodies once formed parts of the same undislocated 

 mass; that matter in a nebulous form preceded matter in 

 its present form; that as the ages rolled away, heat was 

 wasted, condensation followed, planets were detached; 

 and that finally the chief portion of the hot clond 

 reached, by self-compression, the magnitude and density 

 of our sun. The' earth itself offers evidence of a fiery 

 origin; and in our day the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace 

 receives the independent countenance of spectrum analysis, 

 which proves the same substances to be common to the 

 earth and sun. 



Accepting some such view of the construction of our 

 system as probable, a desire immediately arises to connect 

 the present life of our planet with the past. We wish to 

 know something of our remotest ancestry. On its first 

 detachment from the central mass, life, as we understand 

 it, could not have been present on the earth. How, then, 

 did it come there? The thing to be encouraged here is 

 a reverent freedom a freedom preceded by the hard 

 discipline which checks licentiousness in speculation 

 while the thing to be repressed, both in science and out 

 of it, is dogmatism. And here I am in the hands of the 

 meeting willing to end, but ready to go on. I have no 

 right to intrude upon you, unasked, the unformed 

 notions which are floating like clouds, or gathering to 

 more solid consistency, in the modern speculative scientific 

 mind. But if you wish me to speak plainly, honestly, and 

 undisputatiously, I am willing to do so. On the present 

 occasion 



You are ordained to call, and I to come. 



Well, your answer is given, and I obey your call. 



Two or three years ago, in an ancient London college, 1 

 listened to a discussion at the end of a lecture by a very 

 remarkable man. Three or four hundred clergymen were 

 present at the lecture. The orator began with the civiliza- 

 tion of Egypt in the time of Joseph; pointing out the very 

 perfect organization of the kingdom, and the possession of 

 chariots, in one of which Joseph rode, as proving a long 

 antecedent period of civilization. He then passed on to 

 the mud of the Nile, its rate of augmentation, its present 

 thickness, and the remains of human handiwork found 



