66 
ALEX. W. STEIN. 
the second, or development of micrococci into the mature germ. 
In his illustration of this organism, p. 200, American Natur¬ 
alist , vol. 16, he illustrates the mature form more than he does 
the vegetative state, and gives a very fair picture, though not 
exact, of the organism. 
(To be continued .) 
LECTURE ON AGNOSTICISM, 
By Peof. Alex. W. Stein, M.D. 
This is the last lecture of this session. Yon will now go 
home and quietly review in your minds the vast field of learning 
which you have gone over in the several departments which con¬ 
stitute your curriculum, and you will ask yourselves, “ What do 
I know ?” Be sure of knowing that yon do not know. 
All that lies in matter and force we see “ through a glass darkly.” 
The make-up or composition of the most familiar things we know 
only imperfectly. Matter, of whatever kind, whether inorganic 
or organic, living or lifeless, we can examine only in part, for we 
have never been able, with the highest powers of the microscope, 
to make visible the atoms or smallest particles of which it is com¬ 
posed. We are agnostic of the relations that particles of matter 
hold to each other, and the forces which govern them. Separate 
sand into the smallest particles you can, and you will never reach 
the superlative degree of smallness of a molecule or silicon oxide; 
and when we say that each molecule consists of atoms of silicon 
and oxygen, we have certain reasons for the faith that is in us, 
but no ocular proof of the same. 
In order to realize the exceedingly small size of the individual 
molecules, Sir William Thompson imagines a single drop of water 
to be magnified until it becomes as large as the earth, having a 
diameter of 8,000 miles, and all the molecules to be magnified in 
the same proportion, and then concludes that a single molecule 
