246 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



thought so much, and failed to recognize the entirely sub- 

 jective character of this creed, is highly instructive. His 

 **proper organs of divine apprehension" — given, we must 

 assume, to Mr. Martineau and his pupils, but denied to 

 many of the greatest intellects and noblest men in this 

 and other ages — lie at the very core of his emotions. 



In fact, it is when Mr. Martineau is most purely emo- 

 tional that he scorns the emotions; it is when he is most 

 purely subjective that he rejects subjectivity. He pays a 

 just and liberal tribute to the character of John Stuart 

 Mill. But in the light of Mill's philosophy, benevolence, 

 honor, purity, having '* shrunk into mere unaccredited sub- 

 jective susceptibilities, have lost all support from Omnis- 

 cient approval, and all presumable accordance with the 

 reality of things.'* If Mr. Martineau had given them any 

 inkling of the process by which he renders the *' subjec- 

 tive susceptibilities" objective, or how he arrives at an 

 objective ground of *' Omniscient approval," gratitude from 

 his pupils would have been his just meed. But, as it is, 

 he leaves them lost in an iridescent cloud of words, after 

 exciting a desire which he is incompetent to appease. 



*'We are," he says, in another place, "forever shaping 

 our representations of invisible things into forms of defi- 

 nite opinion, and throwing them to the front, as if they 

 were the photographic equivalent of our real faith. It is 

 a delusion which affects us all. Yet somehow the essence 

 of our religion never finds its way into these frames of 

 theory: as we put them together it slips away, and, if we 

 turn to pursue it, still retreats behind ; ever ready to work 

 with the will, to unbind and sweeten the affections, and 

 bathe the life with reverence, but refusing to be seen, or 

 to pass from a divine hue of thinking into a human pat* 



