MATHEMATICAL FICTIONS. 255 



and bring reproach on the modern progress of chemis- 

 try.'* 



"l translate the above from the first page of the first 

 number of the "Gazetta Ohimica Italiana," published at 

 Palermo in January last. Had these words been written 

 in Edinburgh on the evening of the 2d of August, in 

 direct application to Sir William Thomson's address, they 

 could not have described more pointedly and truly the pre- 

 vailing vice of this production. If space permitted, I 

 could go further back and quote the words of Lord Bacon, 

 from the great text-book of inductive philosophy, wherein 

 he denounces the worship of all such intellectual idols as 

 our modern mathematical dreamers have created, and 

 which they so fervently adore. 



An able writer in the Daily News of last Friday is 

 very severe upon the biological portion of the President's 

 address, which contains a really original hypothesis. Sir 

 W. Thomson having stated that he is " ready to adopt as 

 an article of scientific faith, true through all space and 

 through all time, that life proceeds from life, and from 

 nothing but life," asks the question, "How then did life 

 originate on the earth?" and tells us that "if a probable 

 solution consistent with the ordinary course of nature can 

 be found, we must not invoke an abnormal act of creative 

 power." 



He assumes, with that perfect confidence in mathe- 

 matical hypotheses which is characteristic of the school of 

 theorists which he leads, that "tracing the physical history 

 of the earth backwards, on strictly dynamical principles, 

 we are brought to a red-hot melted globe, on which no life 

 could exist;" and then, to account for the beginning of 

 life on our earth as it cooled down, he creates another 

 imaginary world, which he brings in collision with a second 

 similar creation, and thereby shatters it to fragments. He 

 further imagines that one of these imaginary broken-up 

 worlds was already stocked with the sort of life which he 

 says can only proceed from life, and that from such a world 

 thus stocked and thus smashed "many great and small 

 fragments carrying seed and living plants and animals 

 would undoubtedly be scattered through space;" and that, 



