iu :i drop of water? All that wo needed to make the 

 action of the li'/tti<l intelligible was the assumption of Mr. 

 Martini-ail's " homogftiieOfll extended atomic solids," 

 smoothly gliding over one another, lint had \ve supposed 

 the water to he nothing more than this, we should have 

 iirnorantly defrauded it of an intrinsic architectural power, 

 which the art of man, even when pushed to its utmost de- 



f refinement, is incompetent to imitate. I would 

 in\ite Mr. Martineau to consider how inappropiate his 

 figure of a fictitious hank deposit becomes under these 

 circumstances. The "account current" of matter re- 



- nothing at my hands which could be honestly 

 kept hack from it. If, then, ' Democritus and the 

 mathematicians'' so defined matter as to exclude the 

 powers here proved to belong to it, they were clearly wrong, 

 and Mr. Martineau, instead of twitting me with my depar- 

 ture from them, ought rather to applaud me for correcting 

 them.* 



The reader of my small contributions to the literature 

 which deals with the overlapping margins of science and 

 theology, will have noticed how frequently I quote Mr. 

 Kmerson. I do so mainly because in him we have a port 

 and a profoundly religious man, who is really and entirely 

 undaunted by the discoveries of science, past, present, or 

 prospective. In his case Poetry, with the joy of a hac- 

 chanal, takes her graver brother Science by the hand, and 

 cheers him with immortal laughter. By Kmerson scien- 

 tific conceptions are continually transmuted into the liner 

 forms and warmer hues of an ideal world. Our present 

 theme is touched upon in the lines: 



Tin- journeying atoms, primordial wholes 

 Firmly draw, firmly drive by tbeir animate poleg. 



As regards veracity and insight these few words outweigh. 

 in my estimation, all the formal learning expended by Mr. 

 Martineau in those dis|:ii>it.i>ns on Force, where he treats 

 the physicist as a conjuror, and speaks so wittily of atomic 



* Definition implies previous examination of tin- object defined. an<i 



is open to correction or modification as knowledge of tbe object in 



rrraum Sucb ii. '::!- : knovvled^H bas rad '.rally ('banged Otif COO 



reptions of tin- Iiuniiii tennis .-tht-r. converting it^ viluutimis from 



-dinal into tran-v-r>i-. Surh rlian^es also Mr. Martineau'.s 



:.tion> ot matter an- doomed to undergo. 



