6 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



US, and we look with suspicion and dislike on any phi- 

 losophy, the apparent tendency of which is to dry them 

 up. Probably every change from ancient savagery to our 

 present enlightenment has excited, in a greater or less de- 

 gree, fears of this kind. But the fact is, that we have 

 not yet determined whether its present form is necessary 

 to the life and warmth of religious feeling. We may err 

 in linking the imperishable with the transitory, and con- 

 found the living plant with the decaying pole to which it 

 clings. My object, however, at present is not to argue, 

 but to mark a tendency. We have ceased to propitiate 

 the powers of nature — ceased even to pray for things in 

 manifest contradiction to natural laws. In Protestant 

 countries, at least, I think it is conceded that the age 

 of miracles is past. 



At an auberge near the foot of the Khone glacier, I 

 met, in the summer of 1858, an athletic young priest, 

 who, after a solid breakfast, including a bottle of wine, 

 informed me that he had come up to *' bless the moun- 

 tains/' This was the annual custom of the place. Year 

 by year the Highest was entreated, by official intercessors, 

 to make such meteorological arrangements as should in- 

 sure food and shelter for the flocks and herds of the 

 Valaisians. A diversion of the Ehone, or a deepening of 

 the river's bed, would, at the time I now mention, have 

 been of incalculable benefit to the inhabitants of the val- 

 ley. But the priest would have shrunk from the idea of 

 asking the Omnipotent to open a new channel for the 

 river, or to cause a portion of it to flow over the Grimsel 

 pass, and down the valley of Oberhasli to Brientz. This 

 he would have deemed a miracle, and he did not come 

 to ask the Creator to perform miracles, but to do some- 



