Scientific Sophisms. ' 277 



facts, below all phenomena which the scalpel 

 and the microscope can show; a something 

 nameless, invisible, imponderable, yet seemingly 

 omnipresent and omnipotent, retreating before 

 them deeper and deeper, the deeper they 

 delve ; that which the old schoolmen called 

 ' forma formativa,' the mystery of that unknown 

 and truly miraculous element in nature which 

 is always escaping them, though they cannot 

 escape it ; that of which it was written of old, 

 'Whither shall I go from Thy presence, or 

 whither shall I flee from Thy Spirit ? '" * 



17. Proof? See it in the great gulf between 

 the organic and the inorganic, the living and 

 the not-living, a grain of sand and a grain of 

 corn. See it in the inscrutable phenomena of 

 growth. See it in the immutable order which 

 dominates the countless varieties of the vegeta- 

 ble world. Amid all those varieties, with their 

 corresponding powers, it does not matter in the 

 least by what concurrences of circumstance or 

 necessity they may gradually have been de- 

 veloped : the concurrence of circumstance is 

 itself the supreme and inexplicable fact. " We 

 always come at last to a formative cause, which 

 directs the circumstance and mode of meeting 

 1 Canon Kingsley. Lecture at Sion College. 



