18 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
men question then 1 ? Only the childish fables, and worse than 
childish myths, respecting their gods which had suited a less re- 
flecting and coarser age, but which the growing manhood of the 
race rejected as unworthy of its credence. And though we in the 
present day are undoubtedly passing through an anxious time on 
which ages of former criticism are concentrating their fury — in 
fact what the Germans would call a perfect period of " Sturm und 
Drang " — yet we may rest calmly assured that truth is too precious 
and too strong to be destroyed ; the storm may rage through the 
branches of Yggdrasill, but only its weakly and rotten branches 
shall be broken off, and the very storms that rage round its head, 
and rock its mighty trunk, shall only cause its roots to take a 
firmer hold in the soil. 
Let us take a single example. Flushed with their success in the 
investigation of natural phenomena (though it does not appear that 
they know more of the essence of things than was known before), 
scientists have not scrupled to enter the august domain of thought 
— conscience — will j to investigate them not with instruments of 
ethereal temper suited to their nature, but regarding them as attri- 
butes of matter, they entertain the hope of eventually destroying 
the distinction between Matter and Mind ! It is the old story of 
the attempt of the giants to scale Olympus, and must end in a like 
confusion. « g e( j Typhoeus, et validus Mimas, 
Aut quid minaci Porphyrion statu, 
Quid Rhcetus, evulsisque truncis 
Enceladus jaculator audax, 
Contra sonantem Palladis segida 
Possent ruentes ? " 
One source of our difficulties in the investigation of Truth lies 
in the limitation of our faculties, and this is one principal cause of 
the alarm felt by those to whom I have just referred. How often 
do we in our genuine but mistaken love of Truth do her violence 
by seeking to confine her within the narrow limits of our finite 
intelligence ! Pascal observes in his Pensees, though he has ex- 
pressed his meaning rather clumsily, that as Nature has stamped on 
all creation the impress of herself and her Maker, everything 
partakes of this twofold infinity. Let us then avoid dogmatism, 
let us cultivate humility, let us reflect in our fiercest disputes that 
both sides may be in the right, and wait for the time when, rising 
to a loftier height of contemplation, we shall see that what had 
