Proceedings of the British Association. 105 



Truth, which succeeding generations will range over as their own — 

 a world of scientific inquiry, in which not matter only and its pro- 

 perties, but the far more rich and complex relations of life and 

 thought, of passion and motive, interest and actions, will come to be 

 regarded as its legitimate objects. Nor let us fear that in so regard- 

 ing them, we run the smallest danger of collision with any of those 

 great principles which we regard, and rightly regard, as sacred from 

 question. A faithful and undoubting spirit carried into the inquiry, 

 will secure us from such dangers, and guide us, like an instinct, 

 in our paths through that vast and enlarged region which intervenes 

 between those ultimate principles and their extreme practical ap- 

 plications. It is only by working our way upwards towards those 

 principles, as well as downwards from them, that we can ever hope to 

 penetrate such intricacies, and thread their maze ; and it would be 

 worse than folly — it would be treason against all our highest feelings 

 — to doubt that to those who spread themselves over these opposite 

 lines, each moving in his own direction, a thousand points of meeting 

 and mutual and joyful recognition will occur. 



But if Science be really destined to expand its scope, and embrace 

 objects beyond the range of merely material relation, it must not alto- 

 gether and obstinately refuse, even within the limits of such relations, 

 to admit conceptions which at first sight may seem to trench upon 

 the immaterial, such as we have been accustomed to regard it. The 

 time seems to be approaching when a merely mechanical view of nature 

 will become impossible — when the notion of accounting for all the 

 phenomena of nature, and even of mere physics, by simple attractions 

 and repulsions fixedly and unchangeably inherent in material centres 

 (granting any conceivable system of Boscovichian alternations), will 

 be deemed untenable. Already we have introduced the idea of heat- 

 atmospheres about particles, to vary their repulsive forces according 

 to definite laws. But surely this can only be regarded as one of those 

 provisional and temporary conceptions which, though it may be useful 

 as helping us to laws, and as suggesting experiments, we must be 

 prepared to resign if ever such ideas, for instance, as radiant stimulus 

 or conducted influence should lose their present vagueness, and come 

 to receive some distinct scientific interpretation. It is one thing, 

 however, to suggest that our present language and conceptions should 



