6 REPORT—1868, 
exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics of the brain, I think the position 
of the “ Materialist” is stated as far as that position is a tenable one. I think the 
materialist will be able finally to maintain this position against all attacks; but I 
do not think, as the human mind is at present constituted, that he can pass beyond 
it. Ido not think he is entitled to say that his molecular groupings and his 
molecular motions explain everything. In reality they explain nothing. The ut- 
most he can affirm is the association of two classes of phenomena, of whose real 
bond of union he is in absolute ignorance. The problem of the connexion of body 
and soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in the prescientific ages. 
Phosphorus is known to enter into the composition of the human brain, and a 
courageous writer has exclaimed, in his trenchant German, “ Ohne Phosphor kein 
Gedanke.” That may or may not be the case; but eyen 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, who or what impressed upon them this necessity of running into 
organic forms, he has no answer. Science also is mute in reply to these questions. 
But if the materialist is confounded and science rendered dumb, who else is en- 
titled to answer? To whom has the secret been revealed? Let us lower our 
heads and acknowledge our ignorance one and all. Perhaps the mystery may 
resolve itself into knowledge at some future day. The process of things upon this 
earth has been one of amelioration. It is a long way from the Iguanodon and his 
contemporaries, to the President and Members of the British Association. And 
whether we regard the improvement from the scientific or from the theological 
point of view, as the result of progressive development, or as the result of suc- 
cessive exhibitions of creative energy, neither view entitles us to assume that 
man’s present faculties end the series,—that the process of amelioration stops at him. 
A time may therefore come when this ultra-scientific region by which we are 
now enfolded may offer itself to terrestrial, if not to human investigation. ‘Two- 
thirds of the rays emitted by the sun fail to arouse in the eye the sense of vision. 
The rays exist, but the visual organ requisite for their translation into light does 
not exist. And so from this region of darkness and mystery which surrounds us, 
rays may now be darting which require but the development of the proper intel- 
lectual organs to translate them into knowledge as far surpassing ours as ours does 
that of the wallowing reptiles which once held possession of this planet. Mean- 
while the mystery is not without its uses. It certainly may be made a power in 
the human soul; but it is a power which has feeling, not knowledge, for its base. 
It may be, and will be, and we hope is turned to account, both in steadying and 
strengthening the intellect, and in rescuing man from that littleness to which, 
in the struggle for existence, or for precedence in the world, he is continually 
prone. 
On the Necessity for State Intervention to secure the Progress of Physical Science. 
By Lieut.-Col. A. Srranen, F.R.S., Government Inspector of Scientific In- 
struments, India Department. 
The author pointed out that physical science, like literature and the fine arts, 
requires to be taught, to be extended, and to be exhibited; that the necessity for 
teaching science in schools and universities is now generally admitted; that the 
results of science are very fully exhibited in all civilized communities; but that 
the provision for extending the boundaries of scientific knowledge in England is 
inadequate and unsystematic. After enumerating some of the institutions, national 
and corporate, in which certain branches of science are cultivated, the author re- 
marked that these are too limited in their objects, their scope, and their number to 
collect the data, and to push on with the necessary promptitude the investigations 
of which we stand in need. The paper urges that the period is gone by when 
science generally can be cultivated with simple and primitive means; and that 
the required researches of the present day need for their successful prosecution 
buildings expressly constructed for the purpose, extensive and costly appliances, 
and the continuous employment of the highest skill. It is evident that these re- 
