USE OF THE 1MAGJNATION. 441 



The law of Relativity, of which we have previously spoken, 

 may find its application here. These Evolution notions 

 are" absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the intellectual 

 gibbet, in relation to the ideas concerning matter which 

 were drilled into us when young. Spirit and matter have 

 ever been presented to us in the rudest contrast, the one as 

 all-noble, the other as all-vile. But is this correct? Upon 

 the answer to this question all depends. Supposing that, 

 instead of having the foregoing antithesis of spirit and 

 matter presented to our youthful minds, \ve had been 

 taught to regard them as equally worthy, and equally won- 

 derful; to consider them, in fact, as two opposite faces of 

 the selfsame mystery. Supposing that in youth we had 

 been impregnated with the notion of the poet Goethe, 

 instead of the notion of the poet Young, and taught to 

 look upon matter, not as " brute matter," but as the 

 " living garment of God;" do you not think that under 

 these altered circumstances the law of Relativity might 

 have had an outcome different from its present one? Is it 

 not probable that our repugnance to the idea of primeval 

 union between spirit and matter might be considerably 

 abated? Without this total revolution of the notions now 

 prevalent, the Evolution hypothesis must stand condemned; 

 but in many profoundly thoughtful minds such a revolution 

 has already taken place. They degrade neither member of 

 the mysterious duality referred to; but they exalt one of 

 them from its abasement, and repeal the divorce hitherto 

 existing between them. In substance, if not in words, 

 their position as regards the relation of spirit and matter is: 

 "What God hath joined together, let not man put 

 asunder." 



You have been thus led to the outer rim of speculative 

 science, for beyond the nebulae scientific thought has never 

 hitherto ventured. I have tried to state that which I con- 

 sidered ought, in fairness, to be outspoken. I neither 

 think this Evolution hypothesis is to be flouted away con- 

 temptuously, nor that it ought to be denounced as wicked. 

 It is to be brought before the bar of disciplined reason, and 

 there justified or condemned. Let us hearken to those who 

 wisely support it, and to those who wisely oppose it; and 

 let us tolerate those, whose name is legion, who try fool- 

 ishly to do either of these things. The only thing out of 

 place in the discussion is dogmatism on either side. Fear 



