THE BELFAST ADDRKSS. 487 



been adduced; and that were some of us who have pon- 

 dered this question to follow a very common example, and 

 accept testimony because it falls in with our belief, we also 

 should eagerly close with the evidence referred to. But 

 there is in the true man of science a desire stronger than 

 the wish to have his beliefs upheld; namely, the desire to 

 have them true. And this stronger wish causes him to 

 reject the most plausible support, if he has reason to 

 suspect that it is vitiated by error. Those to whom I 

 refer as having studied this question, believing the evidence 

 offered in favor of " spontaneous generation " to be thus 

 vitiated, cannot accept it. They know full well that the 

 chemist now prepares from inorganic matter a vast array 

 of substances, which were some time ago regarded as the 

 sole products of vitality. They are intimately acquainted 

 with the structural power of matter, as evidenced in the 

 phenomena of crystallization. They can justify scien- 

 tifically their belief in its potency, under the proper con- 

 ditions, to produce organisms. But, in reply to your 

 question, they will frankly admit their inability to point 

 to any satisfactory experimental proof that life can be 

 developed, save from demonstrable antecedent life. As 

 already indicated, they draw the line from the highest 

 organisms through lower ones down to the lowest; and it 

 is the prolongation of this line by the intellect, beyond the 

 range of the senses, that leads them to the conclusion 

 which Bruno so boldly enunciated.* 



The " materialism " here professed may be vastly 

 different from what you suppose, and I therefore crave 

 your gracious patience to the end. " The question of an 

 external world," says J. S. Mill, " is the great battle-ground 

 of metaphysics. "f Mr. Mill himself reduces external 

 phenomena to " possibilities of sensation." Kant, as we 

 have seen, made time and space " forms " of our own 

 intuitions. Fichte, having first by the inexorable logic of 

 his understanding proved himself to be a mere link in 

 that chain of eternal causation which holds so rigidly in 

 nature, violently broke the chain by making nature, and 

 all that it inherits, an apparition of the mind.| And it is 



* Bruno was a " Pantheist," not an " Atheist " or a " Materialist." 

 j- " Examination of Hamilton," p. 154. 

 J" Bestiimnung des Menscheu." 



