396 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



sun. It is the sun that separates the carbon from the 

 oxygen of the carbonic acid, and thus enables them to 

 recombine. Whether they recombine in the furnace of the 

 steam-engine or in the animal body, the origin of the 

 power they produce is the same. In this sense we are all 

 " souls of fire and children of the sun." But, as remarked 

 by Helmholtz, we must be content to share our celestial 

 pedigree with the meanest of living things. 



Some estimable persons, here present, very possibly 

 shrink from accepting these statements; they may be 

 frightened by their apparent tendency toward what is 

 called materialism a word which, to many minds expresses 

 something very dreadful. But it ought to be known and 

 avowed that the physical philosopher, as such, must be a 

 pure materialist. His inquiries deal with matter and force, 

 and with them alone. And whatever be the forms which 

 matter and force assume, whether in the organic world or 

 the inorganic, whether in the coal-beds and forests of the 

 earth, or in the brains and muscles of men, the physical 

 philosopher will make good his right to investigate them. 

 It is perfectly vain to attempt to stop inquiry in this direc- 

 tion. Depend upon it, if a chemist by bringing the proper 

 materials together, in a retort or crucible, could make a 

 baby, he would do it. There is no law, moral or physical, 

 forbidding him to do it. At the present moment there are, 

 no doubt, persons experimenting on the possibility of pro- 

 ducing what we call life out of inorganic materials. Let 

 them pursue their studies in peace; it is only by such 

 trials that they will learn the limits of their own powers 

 and the operation of the laws of matter and force. 



But while thus making the largest demand for freedom 

 of investigation while I consider science to be alike power- 

 ful as an instrument of intellectual culture and as a min- 

 istrant to the material wants of men; if you ask me 

 whether it has solved, or is likely in our day to solve, the 

 problem of this universe, I must shake my head in doubt. 

 You remember the first Napoleon's question, when the 

 savans who accompanied him to Egypt discussed in his 

 presence the origin of the universe, and solved it to their 

 own apparent satisfaction. He looked aloft to the starry 

 heavens, and said, " It is all very well, gentlemen; but who 

 made these?" That question still remains unanswered, 

 and science makes no attempt to answer it. As far as I 



