REV. JAMES MARTINEAU AJND BELFAST ADDRESS. 249 



anything besides matter in the egg, or in the infant 

 subsequently slumbering in the womb, what is it? The 

 questions already asked with reference to the stars of 

 snow may be here repeated. Mr. Martineau will com- 

 plain that I am disenchanting the babe of its wonder ; 

 but is this the case ? I figure it growing in the 

 womb, woven by a something not itself, without con- 

 scious participation on the part of either father or 

 mother, and appearing in due time a living miracle, 

 with all its organs and all their implications. Consider 

 the work accomplished during these nine months in 

 forming the eye alone with its lens, and its humours, 

 and its miraculous retina behind. Consider the ear with 

 its tympanum, cochlea, and Corti's organ an instrument 

 of three thousand strings, built adjacent to the brain, 

 and employed by it to sift, separate, and interpret, ante- 

 cedent to all consciousness, the sonorous tremors of the 

 external world. All this has been accomplished, not only 

 without man's contrivance, but without his knowledge, 

 the secret of his own organisation having been withheld 

 from him since his birth in the immeasurable past, until 

 these latter days. Matter I define as that mysterious 

 thing by which all this is accomplished. How it came 

 to have this power is a question on which I never 

 ventured an opinion. If, then, Matter starts as 'a 

 beggar,' it is, in my view, because the Jacobs of theo- 

 logy have deprived it of its birthright. Mr. Mar- 

 tineau need fear no disenchantment. Theories of 

 evolution go but a short way towards the expla- 

 nation of this mystery; the Ages, let us hope, will 

 at length give us a Poet competent to deal with it 

 aright. 



There are men, and they include amongst them 

 some of the best of the race of man, upon whose minds 

 this mystery falls without producing either warmth or 



