LECTURE ON AGNOSTICISM. 
69 
will be tempted to say with Josh Billings, “ A man had better not 
know so much than to know so many things that ain’t so” But 
no ; the only way we have of formulating our ideas is through 
physical laws. Take from us the faculty of philosophical reason¬ 
ing, and all research and progress will stop. But I wish simply 
to show that spiritual agnosticism is quite in conformity with 
man’s knowledge of material things. The material world is the 
shell through which we have to break to reach the kernel of life , 
mind and soul. 
Let us now turn to living matter, and here we shall find a 
complexity of composition and of function which becomes more 
apparent the higher we ascend the scale of animal life. At the 
bottom of the sea is found a slimy, sticky substance, which, upon 
chemical analysis, yields carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and 
sulphur. It is so small that you place it under the microscope. 
It consists of an irregular spatter of semi-fluid matter, colorless, 
transparent, and structureless. This body, the monad, is the 
simplest organism with which we are acquainted ; yet it is the 
perfect type of living matter, and although it does not display 
any structure, it performs the functions of the most highly or¬ 
ganized animals, namely: motion, assimilation, sensation and 
procreation. This body, when completely at rest, assumes the 
shape of a simple sphere, and, as a rule, it is in incessant motion, 
throwing out delicate arms or processes; these, adhering to some 
portion of the glass slide, drag the body after it, and so it moves 
sluggishly from place to place. When a small diatom, another 
dweller of the sea, inclosed in a shell, comes in contact with it, it 
surrounds, absorbs and assimilates the nutritive portion, and 
rejects the empty shell. In a little while you will observe a mul¬ 
tiplication or segmentation of the central mass, and each minute 
particle instantly begins a separate existence, and gradually 
reaches the size of the ancestral organism. If now you touch 
the surface with a point of a pin, or send a current of electricity 
through it, the threads are drawn in and the entire body contracts 
into the form of a spherical lump. 
Now let us jump from the lowest of animal life to man. If 
we take a drop of blood and keep it at the temperature of the 
