642 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



correlative in the physics of the brain, the position of the 

 ' Materialist/ as far as that position is tenable,, is stated. 

 I think the materialist will be able finally to maintain this 

 position against all attacks, but I do not think he can pass 

 beyond it. The problem of the connection of body and 

 soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in the pre- 

 scientific ages. Phosphorus is a constituent of the human 

 brain, and a trenchant German writer has exclaimed, 

 6 Ohne Phosphor kein gedanke!' That may or may not 

 be the case; but, even if we knew it to be "the case, the 

 knowledge would not lighten our darkness. On both sides 

 of the zone here assigned to the materialist he is equally 

 helpless. If you ask him whence is this 'matter' of 

 which we have been discoursing who or what divided it 

 into molecules, and impressed upon them this necessity of 

 running into organic forms he has no answer. Science is 

 also mute in regard to such questions. But if the materi- 

 alist is confounded and science is rendered dumb, who else 

 is prepared with an answer? Let us lower our heads and 

 acknowledge our ignorance, priest and philosopher, one 

 and all." 



The roll of echoes which succeeded the lecture delivered 

 by Professor Virchow at Munich on September 22, 1877, 

 was long and loud. The Times published a nearly full 

 translation of the lecture, and it was eagerly commented 

 on in other journals. Glances from it to an address 

 delivered by me before the Midland Institute in the 

 autumn of 1877, and published in this volume, were very 

 frequent. Professor Virchow was held up to me in some 

 quarters as a model of philosophic caution, who by his 

 reasonableness reproved my rashness, and by his depth 

 reproved my shallovvness. With true theologic courtesy I 

 was sedulously emptied, not only of the " principles of 

 scientific thought," but of " common modesty " and " com- 

 mon sense." And though I am indebted to Professor 

 Clifford for recalling in the Nineteenth Century for 

 April the public mind in this connection from heated fancy 

 to sober fact, I do not think a brief additional examination 

 of Virchow's views, and of my relation to them, will be out 

 of place here. 



The keynote of his position is struck in the preface to 

 the excellent English translation of his lecture a preface 



