526 FRA OMENTS OF SCIENCK. 



magnificence" of the leaves. Does it lessen my amaze- 

 ment to know that every cluster, and every leaf their form 

 and texture lie, like the music in the rod, in the molecular 

 structure of these apparently insignificant stems? Not so. 

 Mr. Martineau weeps for " the beauty of the flower fad- 

 ing into a necessity." I care not whether it comes to me 

 through necessity or through freedom, my delight in it is 

 all the same. I see what he sees with a wonder superadded. 

 To me, as to him, not even Solomon in all his glory was 

 arrayed like one of these. 



I have spoken above as if the assumption of a soul would 

 save Mr. Martineau from the inconsistency of crediting 

 pure matter with the astonishing building power displayed 

 in crystals and trees. This, however, would not be the 

 necessary result; for it would remain to be proved that the 

 soul assumed is not itself matter. When a boy I learned 

 from Dr. Watts that the souls of conscious brutes are mere 

 matter. And the man who would claim for matter the 

 human soul itself, would find himself in very orthodox 

 company. " All that is created," says Fauste, a famous 

 French bishop of the fifth century, " is matter. The soul 

 occupies a place; it is enclosed in a body; it quits the body 

 at death, and returns to it at the resurrection, as in the 

 case of Lazarus; the distinction between hell and heaven, 

 between eternal pleasures and eternal pains, proves that, 

 even after death, souls occupy a place and are corporeal. 

 God only is incorporeal." Tertullian, moreover, was quite 

 a physicist in the definiteness of his conceptions regarding 

 the soul. "The materiality of the soul," he says, "is 

 evident from the evangelists. A human soul is there ex- 

 pressly pictured as suffering in hell; it is placed in the 

 middle of a flame, its tongue feels a cruel agony, and it 

 implores a drop of water at the hands of a happier soul. 

 Wanting materiality/' adds Tertullian, " all this would be 

 without meaning."* 



* The foregoing extracts, which M. Alglave recently brought to 

 light for the benefit of the bishop of Orleans, are taken from the 

 sixth lecture of the " Cours d'Histoire Moderne " of that most 

 orthodox of statesmen, M. Guizot. "I could multiply," continues 

 M. Guizot, " these citations to infinity, and they prove that in the 

 first centuries of our era the materiality of the soul was an opinion 

 not only permitted, but dominant." Dr. Moriarty, and the synod 

 which he recently addressed, obviously forget their own antecedents. 



