192 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



products of vitality. They are intimately acquainted 

 with the structural power of matter, as evidenced in the 

 phenomena of crystallisation. They can justify scien- 

 tifically their beMef in its potency, under the proper 

 conditions, 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 in- 

 tellect, beyond the range of the senses, that leads them 

 to the conclusion which Bruno so boldly enunciated. 1 



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.' 2 Mr. Mill himself reduces ex- 

 ternal 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. 3 And it is by no means easy to combat such 

 notions. For when I say ' I see you,' and that there is 

 not the least doubt about it, the obvious reply is, that 

 what I am really conscious of is an affection of my own 

 retina. And if I urge that my sight can be checked 

 by touching you, the retort would be thai) I am 

 equally transgressing the limits of fact ; for what I am 



1 Bruno was a ' Pantheist,' not an ' Atheist ' or a ' Materialist.' 



* ' Examination of Hamilton,' p. 154. 



' Bestimmung des Menschen.' 



