attained. While to those who are outside of the theological haze, the prospect of the issue appears as clear as the horizon at noonday, it is a strange spectacle to them to witness the tumult caused by Popish aggression, and other quarrels within the theological enclosure, at the same time that a power greater than that of Pope or Prerogative, of Councils or Churches, is steadily advancing to the overthrow of them all. It should, however, be called rather a renovation than an overthow: for Science can abolish nothing but what is unreal; and then, only in order to substantiate what is real. Her office is to take out the vital principle from forms, once beautiful, when they begin to grow hideous with age, and to transfuse it into new forms of beauty which we may love without fear and without disgust. She comes to relieve us from our hagridden state, and to bring about us forms as fresh as the morning, and as beautiful as the spring. When we see the Pope and the Church about to fly off, two old witches on broomsticks, it is an odd sight to see their wrangling before they start; and but for the genuine affections and serious moral associations of so many persons that are involved in the struggle, it would be purely ludi

crous.

--

I have run on till I may have reminded you, to my own disadvantage, of Bacon's warning not to think about theology when pursuing science, or science when pursuing theology. But I believe it has been natural to us both, and even inevitable,

to contemplate theology to the extent that we have done, because it is at present an impediment in the way of science. We do not turn aside after it, I think; but finding it in our way, we discuss it, and pass on. Will you now pass on to the questions I asked you? about the connection between light and sight; and about how you conceive our consciousness of identity to run through all our life, while the material of life is incessantly changing; and also about how you conceive we may set to work to imagine the manner of the fact that we know to be fact, that dying people impress others at a distance with a knowledge, by sensation, that the process of death is taking place?

XXII.

CENTRAL LAW AND PERVASIVE UNITY.—LIGHT. SENSE OF IDENTITY. - GHOST-SEEING. UNREVEALED HUMAN RELATIONS.

H. G. A. To H. M.

How natural it was for men to use false similes! for instance, to liken to the making of a loaf of bread the material existence and growth of the corn out of which the bread was made. We are so apt to forget that man creates nothing; that to invent or make, is but to place materials in juxtaposition; and that Nature does all the rest! All the effects

*

of Nature, and all the doings of Man, who is part of Nature, are the consequents of the interaction of matter, of the influence of body on body. Science has brought us to this; and we must not let the truth escape us. "The mind of Man," says Bacon, "is like an enchanted glass; full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced."-"Nay, it is not credible, till it be opened, what a number of fictions and fancies the similitude of human action and arts, together with making of Man communis mensura, have brought into natural philosophy, not much better than the heresy of the anthropomorphites, bred in the cells of gross and solitary monks; and the opinions of Epicurus, answerable to the same in heathenism, who supposed the gods to be in human shape. And therefore, Velleius, the Epicurean, needed not to have asked why God should have adorned the heaven with stars, as if he had been an Edilis; one that should have set forth some magnificent shows or plays. For if that great Workmaster had been of a human disposition, he would have cast the stars into some pleasant and beautiful works and orders, like the frets in roofs of houses; whereas one can scarce find a posture in square, or triangle, or straight line, among such an infinite number; so differing a harmony there is between the spirit of Man, and the spirit of Nature."

In the infancy of knowledge, men look upon the growth of a tree and the birth of an animal as

* Advancement of Learning. Idols of the Mind.

the

miraculous. The bursting forth of the foliage in Spring is as if the earth had been touched by the wand of a magician: as if a great magician had said, "Let there be new growth and beauty over the earth;" and growth and beauty were. The sunset was the showing forth of glory, and the stimulus to praise and worship. The rainbow and the eclipse are as signs in the heavens. The sun is made to shine for man: the moon and the myriad stars are lights set up to shine for man, lamp-lighting for the night's use. It was yet to be known that the sun which was to rule the day, was the cause of the day. Day and night, it was said, were created on the first day, and the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day. It was not known that the sun, and the earth, and moon, are but atoms in the universe. The thunder was the voice of the Great Spirit; the lightning, the thunderbolt, was the instrument of his vengeance. The Great Spirit was busy in the battle-field, and the plague was the effect of his wrath. Misfortunes and good fortune were all the doings of the Great Spirit. Under such ideas, men blindly submitted to an inscrutable destiny, and believed in the most fatal of fatalisms. Or, if they exerted themselves, it wasin prayer and beseechings; in offerings, to propitiate their offended God. Science is gradually leading through these notions of the cave into open daylight, by showing the undeviating laws of nature : and thus men are gradually drawn out of the church into the lecture-room. The divine will become

the philosopher; and the philosopher the divine. Knowledge is power, and rules the mind, as well as enables the mind to rule. In a transition state, men may reject innovation, and storm, and feel deeply shocked, and most indignant at the new doctrine; while Science, like the needle, guides them through the darkness, and shows the cause of the storm, and how the storm of the mind is related to the storm in the clouds; how they are the same footprints of Nature on different surfaces or spheres.

From a knowledge of particular laws, we gain a notion of universal Law: and from this occurs the idea of a Unity in Nature, just as from the finite we suppose the infinite, and universality. I remember when a youth, sitting on the marble rocks of Devonshire, to rest, after investigating the nature of the marbles and the plants of the district. I had observed that certain dark veins in the marble must have been cracks, filled up by vegetable deposits, which afterwards became stone: and then I thought of the diamond which I had been told was convertible into charcoal: and I picked up a blade of grass and asked myself, "What was this a month ago? And those sheep,-what were they a few months ago? And myself, what was I a few years back? And will not the grass grow fresh upon my grave when I am dead? And what was the substance of the globe before it took the form of chalk and clay and silex,-vegetables and hinking substances?" And I became impressed

.