— 
ADDRESS. Ixxxi 
exercise have a perfectly transcendental value and significance—to forget 
all this does, I think, open a way to innumerable errors in our habits of 
life, and may possibly in some cases initiate and foster that very disease, and 
consequent mental ruin, which a wiser appreciation of this mysterious organ 
would have avoided.” : 
I can imagine the Bishop thoughtful after hearing this argument. He was 
not the man to allow anger to mingle with the consideration of a point of 
this kind. After due reflection, and having strengthened himself by that 
honest contemplation of the facts which was habitual with him, and which 
includes the desire to give even adverse facts their due weight, I can 
suppose the Bishop to proceed thus :—‘‘ You will remember that in the 
‘Analogy of Religion,’ of which you have so kindly spoken, I did not profess 
to prove any thing absolutely, and that I over and over again acknowledged 
and insisted on the smallness of our knowledge, or rather the depth of our 
ignorance, as regards the whole system of the universe. My object was 
to show my deistical friends, who set forth so eloquently the beauty and 
beneficence of Nature and the Ruler thereof, while they had nothing but 
scorn for the so-called absurdities of the Christian scheme, that they were 
in no better condition than we were, and that, for every difficulty found upon 
our side, quite as great a difficulty was to be found upon theirs, I will now 
with your permission adopt a similar line of argument. You area Lucretian, 
and from the combination and separation of insensate atoms deduce all ter- 
restrial things, including organic forms and their phenomena. Let me tell 
you in the first instance how far I am prepared to go with you. I admit that 
you can build crystalline forms out of this play of molecular force; that the 
diamond, amethyst, and snow-star are truly wonderful structures which are 
thus produced. I will go further and acknowledge that even a tree or flower 
might in this way be organized. Nay, if you can show me an animal without 
sensation, I will concede to you that it also might be put together by the suit- 
able play of molecular force. 
“Thus far our way is clear, but now comes my difficulty. Your atoms 
are individually without sensation, much more are they without intelligence. 
May I ask you, then, to try your hand upon this problem. Take your dead 
hydrogen atoms, your dead oxygen atoms, your dead carbon atoms, your dead 
nitrogen atoms, your dead phosphorus atoms, and all the other atoms, 
dead as grains of shot, of which the brain is formed. Imagine them separate 
and sensationless ; observe them running together and forming all imaginable 
combinations. This, as a purely mechanical process, is seeable by the mind. 
But can you see, or dream, or in any way imagine, how out of that mecha- 
nical act, and from these individually dead atoms, sensation, thought, and 
emotion are to arise? Are you likely to extract Homer out of the rattling 
of dice, or the Differential Calculus out of the clash of billiard-balls? 
I am not all bereft of this Vorstellungs-Kraft of which you speak, nor am I, 
like so many of my brethren, a mere vacuum as regards scientific know- 
ledge. I can follow a particle of musk until it reaches the olfactory 
nerve; I can follow the waves of sound until their tremors reach the 
water of the labyrinth, and set the otoliths and Corti’s fibres in motion ; 
T can also visualize the waves of ether as they cross the eye and hit the retina. 
Nay more, I am able to pursue to the central organ the motion thus im- 
parted at the periphery, and to sec in idea the very molecules of the brain thrown 
into tremors. My insight is not baffled by these physical processes. What 
baffles and bewilders me—is the notion that from those physical tremors 
things so utterly incongruous with them as sensation, thought, and emotion 
1874. 
