one who is acquainted with the history of science will 

 admit, that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now 

 more than ever means, the extension of the province of 

 what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant 

 gradual banishment from all regions of human thought 

 of what we call spirit and spontaneity. 



I have endeavored, in the first part of this discourse, to 

 give you a conception of the direction towards which mod- 

 ern physiology is tending ; and I ask you, what is the dif- 

 ference between the conception of life as the product of a 

 certain disposition of material molecules, and the old no- 

 tion of an Archaeus governing and directing blind mat- 

 ter within each living body, except this that here, as 

 elsewhere, matter and law have devoured spirit and 

 spontaneity ? And as surely as every future grows out 

 of past and present, so will the physiology of the future 

 gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is 

 coextensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with ac- 

 tion. The consciousnes of this great truth weighs like a 

 nightmare, I believe, upon many of the best minds of 

 these days. They watch what they conceive to be the 

 progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless 

 anger as a savage feels, when, during an eclipse, the 

 great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The ad- 

 vancing tide of matter threatens to drown their souls ; 

 the tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom ; they 

 are alarmed lest man's moral nature be debased by the 

 increase of his wisdom. 



If the " New Philosophy" be worthy of the reproba- 

 tion with which it is visited, I confess their fears seem to 

 me to be well founded. While, on the contrary, could 



