except for the general and natural belief that deliberate and reiterated assertions must have some foundation.' 1 It is by this time tolerably clear that Professor Huxley's 'Chemistry of Life' has no foundation except that of 'deliberate and reiterated assertion.' " 2 But "if such be the case with the chemistry, what is to be said for the argument founded upon it, or attached to it-if, indeed, argument it can be called?" It has now been tried, and found wanting, in every particular. It is condemned by its own admissions. It is condemned by the magnitude of its assumptions. It is condemned by its antagonism to notorious facts, and its violation of established principles. And the sentence which has followed condemnation is not less just than severe :— "I cannot more appropriately conclude this notice of the doctrine of 'The Physical Basis of Life,' than with an extract from the author's own anthology of criticism, where, speaking of the theory of creation, he says :— "That such verbal hocus-pocus should be received as 1 "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature," p. 85. 2 Dr. Elam: Contemporary Review, September, 1876, P. 555. 3 Professor Huxley's "Lay Sermons," p. 285. science will one day be regarded as evidence of the low state of intelligence in the nineteenth century, just as we amuse ourselves with the phraseology about nature's abhorrence of a vacuum, wherewith Torricelli's compatriots were satisfied to explain the rise of water in a pump.' 1 Dr. Elam: Contemporary Review, October, 1876 p. 732. "God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice, For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice. Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.”—Tennyson. "Science is only the one half: Faith is the other."Novalis. CHAPTER VIII. THE THREE BEGINNINGS. 1 "GIVE me matter," said Kant, "and I will explain the formation of a world; but give me matter only, and I cannot explain the formation of a caterpillar." This dictum is widely different from that of Professor Tyndall, who discerns in matter alone "the promise and potency of all terrestrial life." To the same effect is his eulogium on the Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno, of whom he tells us that "he came to the conclusion that Nature in her productions does not imitate the technic of man. Her process is one of unravelling and unfolding. The infinity of forms under which matter appears were not imposed upon it by an external artificer; by its own intrinsic force and virtue it brings these forms forth. Matter is not the mere naked, empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal 1 "Belfast Address," pp. 19, 20. |