180 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



counterpart of which is a vibration. It is a flash only by 

 your interpretation. You are the cause of the apparent 

 incongruity; and you are the thing that puzzles me. I 

 need not remind you that the great Leibnitz felt the diffi- 

 culty which I feel; and that, to get rid of this monstrous 

 deduction of life from death, he displaced your atoms by 

 his monads, which were more or less perfect mirrors of 

 the universe, and out of the summation and integration 

 of which he supposed all the phenomena of life sentient, 

 intellectual, and emotional to arise. 



"Your difficulty, then, as I see you are ready to admit, 

 is quite as great as mine. You cannot satisfy the human 

 understanding in its demand for logical continuity between 

 molecular processes and the phenomena of consciousness. 

 This is a rock on which Materialism must inevitably split 

 whenever it pretends to be a complete philosophy of life. 

 What is the moral, my Lucretian? You and I are not 

 likely to indulge in ill- temper in the discussion of these 

 great topics, where we see so much room for honest differ- 

 ences of opinion. But there are people of less wit or more 

 bigotry (I say it with humility), on both sides, who are 

 ever ready to mingle anger and vituperation with such dis- 

 cussions. There are, for example, writers of note and in- 

 fluence at the present day who are not ashamed publicly 

 to assume the 'deep personal sin' of a great logician to be 

 the cause of his unbelief in a theologic dogma. 1 And 



1 This is the aspect under which the late Editor of the "Dublin Review" 

 presented to his readers the memory of John Stuart Mill. I can only say that 

 I would as soon take my chance in the other world, in the company of the 

 " unbeliever," as in that of his Jesuit detractor. In Dr. Ward we have an 

 example of a wholesome and vigorous nature, soured and perverted by a 

 poisonous creed. 



