240 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



ously away, lie does not define the Sacred residue; mucli 

 less give us the reasons why he deems them sacred. * His 

 references to "Nature," on the other hand, are magnifi- 

 cent tirades against Nature, intended, apparently, to show 

 the wholly abominable character of man's antecedents if 

 the theory of evolution be true. Here also his mood 

 lacks steadiness. While joyfully accepting, at one place, 

 "the widening space, the deepening vistas of time, the 

 detected marvels of physiological structure, and the rapid 

 filling- in of the missing links in the chain of organic 

 life," he falls, at another, into lamentation and mourn- 

 ing over the very theory which renders "organic life" "a 

 chain." He claims the largest liberality for his sect, and 

 avows its contempt for the dangers of possible discovery. 

 But immediately afterward he damages the claim, and 

 ruins all confidence in the avowal. He professes sym- 

 pathy with modern Science, and almost in the same 

 breath he treats, or certainly will be understood to treat, 

 the Atomic Theory, and the doctrine of the Conservation 

 of Energy, as if they were a kind of scientific thimble- 

 riggery. 



His ardor, moreover, renders him inaccurate; causing 

 him to see discord between scientific men where nothing 

 but harmony reigns. In his celebrated Address to the 

 Congress of German Naturforscher, delivered at Leipzig, 

 three years ago, Du Bois-Reymond speaks thus: "What 

 conceivable connection subsists between definite move- 

 ments of definite atoms in my brain, on the one hand, 



* Mr. Martineau's use of the term **sacred" is unintentionally misleading. 

 In his later essays we are taught that he does not mean to restrict it to the 

 Bible. He does not, however, mention the * 'books" beyond those of the Bible 

 to which he would apply the term. 1879. 



