APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 



47 



condense? Loss of heat. What rounded 

 the sun and planets ? That which rounds 

 a tear molecular force. For aeons, the 

 immensity of which overwhelms man's 

 conceptions, the earth was unfit to main- 

 tain what we call life. It is now covered 

 with visible living things. They are not 

 formed of matter different from that of 

 the earth around them. They are, on 

 the contrary, bone of its bone, and flesh 

 of its flesh. How were they introduced? 

 Was life implicated in the nebula as 

 part, it may be, of a vaster and wholly 

 Unfathomable Life ; or is it the work of 

 a Being standing outside the nebula, 

 who fashioned it, and vitalised it ; but 

 whose own origin and ways are equally 

 past finding out? As far as the eye of 

 science has hitherto ranged through 

 nature, no intrusion of purely creative 

 power into any series of phenomena has 

 ever been observed. The assumption 

 of such a power to account for special 

 phenomena, though often made, has 

 always proved a failure. It is opposed 

 to the very spirit of science ; and I there- 

 fore assumed the responsibility of holding 

 up, in contrast with it, that method of 

 nature which it has been the vocation 

 and triumph of science to disclose, and 

 in the application of which we can alone 

 hope for further light. Holding, then, 

 that the nebulae and the solar system, 

 life included, stand to each other in the 

 relation of the germ to the finished 

 organism, I reaffirm here, not arrogantly 

 or defiantly, but without a shade of indis- 

 tinctness, the position laid down at 

 Belfast. 



Not with the vagueness belonging to 

 the emotions, but with the definiteness 

 belonging to the understanding, the 

 scientific man has to put to himself these 

 questions regarding the introduction of 

 life upon the earth. He will be the last 

 to dogmatise upon the subject, for he 

 knows best that certainty is here for the 

 present unattainable. His refusal of the 

 creative hypothesis is less an assertion of 

 knowledge than a protest against the 

 assumption of knowledge which must 

 long, if not for ever, lie beyond us, and 



the claim to which is the source of per- 

 petual confusion upon earth. With a 

 mind open to conviction he asks his 

 opponents to show him an authority for 

 the belief they so strenuously and so 

 fiercely uphold. They can do no more 

 than point to the Book of Genesis, or 

 some other portion of the Bible. Pro- 

 foundly interesting, and indeed pathetic, 

 to me are those attempts of the opening 

 mind of man to appease its hunger for a 

 Cause. But the Book of Genesis has no 

 voice in scientific questions. To the 

 grasp of geology, which it resisted for a 

 time, it at length yielded like potter's 

 clay ; its authority as a system of cosmo- 

 gony being discredited on all hands by 

 the abandonment of the obvious meaning 

 of its writer. It is a poem, not a scien- 

 tific treatise. In the former aspect it is 

 for ever beautiful : in the latter aspect it 

 has been, and it will continue to be, 

 purely obstructive and hurtful. To 

 knowledge its value has been negative, 

 leading, in rougher ages than ours, to 

 physical, and even in our own " free " 

 age to moral, violence. 



No incident connected with the pro- 

 ceedings at Belfast is more instructive 

 than the deportment of the Catholic 

 hierarchy of Ireland ; a body usually too 

 wise to confer notoriety upon an adver- 

 sary by imprudently denouncing him. 

 The Times, to which I owe a great deal 

 j on the score of fair play, where so much 

 has been unfair, thinks that the Irish 

 Cardinal, Archbishops, and Bishops, in 

 a recent manifesto, adroitly employed a 

 weapon which I, at an unlucky moment, 

 placed in their hands. The antecedents 

 of their action cause me to regard it in 

 a different light ; and a brief reference 

 to these antecedents will, I think, illu- 

 minate not only their proceedings regard- 

 ing Belfast, but other doings which have 

 been recently noised abroad. 



Before me lies a document bearing 

 the date of November, 1873, which, after 

 appearing for a moment, unaccountably 

 vanished from public view. It is a 

 Memorial addressed by seventy of the 



