USB OF THK 1 MAO IN A TION. 441 



The law of llelativity, of which we have previously spoken, 

 may find its application here. These HToldtion notions 



:isurd. monstrous, and fit only for the intellectual 

 gibbet, ID relation to the ideas concerning matter which 

 were drilled into us when young. Spirit and matter have 

 ever been presented to us in the rudest contrast, the < 

 all-noble, the other as all-vile. But is this correct? Upon 

 the answer to this question all depends. Supposing that, 

 instead of having the foregoing antithesis of spirit and 

 matter presented to our youthful minds, we had been 

 taught to regard them as equally worthy, and equally won- 

 derful; to consider them, in fact, as two opposite faces of 



> Ifsame mystery. Supposing that iu youth we had 

 been impregnated with the notion of the poet (loethe, 



id of the notion of the poet Young, and taught to 

 look upon matter, not as " brute matter," but as the 

 " living garment of (lod:" do you not think that under 

 altered circumstances the law of Relativity might 

 have had an outcome different from its present one? Is it 

 not probable that our repugnance to the idea of primeval 

 union between spirit and matter might be considerably 

 abated? Without this total revolution of the notions now 

 prevalent, the Kvolution hypothesis muststand condemned; 

 but in many profoundly thoughtful minds such a revolution 

 has already taken place. They degrade neither member of 

 the mysterious duality referred to; but they exalt one of 

 them from its abasement, and repeal the divorce hitherto 

 existing between them. In substance, if not in words, 

 their position as regards the relation of spirit and matter is: 

 " What God hath joined together, let not man put 

 asunder." 



You have been thus led to the outer rim of speculative 

 science, for beyond the nebula- scientific thought has never 

 hitherto ventured. I have tried to state that which I con- 

 >idcred ought, in fairness, to be outspoken. I neither 

 think this Kvolution hypothesis is to be flouted awav con- 

 tempt '.lously. nor that it ought to hi- denounced as wicked. 



U) be brought before the bar of disciplined reason, and 

 there justilied or condemned. L-t us hearken to those who 

 wi>e|\ support it. and to those who wisely oppose it: and 

 let BB tolerate tho legion, who try fool- 



ishly to do either of the The only thing mil of 



place in the discus iiismon riil'iur aide. l-V.ir 



