132 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



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, we had been taught to 

 regard them as equally worthy, and equally wonderful ; 

 to consider them, in fact, as two opposite faces of the 

 self-same 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 4 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 de- 

 grade neither member of the mysterious duality re- 

 ferred to ; but they exalt one of them from its abase- 

 ment, 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 specula- 

 tive science, for beyond the nebulae scientific thought 

 has never hitherto ventured. I have tried to state that 

 which I considered ought, in fairness, to be outspoken. 

 I neither think this Evolution hypothesis is to be flouted 

 away contemptuously, nor that it ought to be denounced 

 as wicked. It is to be brought before the bar of dis- 

 ciplined 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 



