Science and True Doctrine Agree.

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man's welfare are the motives which unitedly urge devout and thoughtful men to fearless investigation of truth. The fanatical and ignorant, in all ages, are afraid to unveil her statue; they say "we will none of this dogma, none of that science;" but the great and good have no fears that, perchance, they may encounter a ghastly death's head: they know that the beaming countenance of the image of Truth, raised by God Almighty, is the face of Jesus Christ, where Divine glory and human purity meet in rarest beauty. Feeling their way, as best they can, into that limited portion of facts lying within their reach, they interpret the Two Books of Revelation, the Works of God and the Word of God, as they are not as men might like them to be. The mediæval conception of the material and spirit world, as presented by Dante, was in harmony with the best science and the urgent wants of the time; but the Copernican revolution displaced all that, and scientific light thrown on the Bible enables us more largely to understand Providence, and to see that God's plan for every man is written in the physical laws of the universe and in the pure morality of Holy Scripture.

It is time that all good and true men, whether professed students of Science or professors of Religion, put down every feeling of antagonism. The roll of names, illustrating the annals of science, does of itself ennoble that pursuit; the Newtons, the wallises, the Wollastons, the Davys, the Rumfords, the Faradays, confer imperishable renown; will not praise be added to their successors if, enfranchised from narrowness, they recognize those other lights which shine here and there in the path of human life, that wayfarers may walk cheerily onward to their future home?

For those who would falsify our high lineage, and require that we discard, as a romantic delusion, the ennobling conviction that we are little lower than the angels; we have an answer in the words of Goethe-"No strong-minded man suffers his belief in immortality to be torn from his breast." Indeed, we can show that their science is neither far-searching nor deep-piercing, and show it in their own way. Acting on their words "take nothing on trust, . . . . learn of nature,

listen to the voice of truth "-we try their knowledge;

we empty a lark's egg into a little vessel, a thrush's egg into another little vessel, a starling's egg into a third little vessel, and a blackbird's egg into a fourth little vessel, and, having destroyed the shells, ask these men to justify our confidence in their skill by severally naming the birds: they cannot ; no, not even by aid of a microscope.

These are a small matter, try something great. Take a Camel, show the skeleton, and inquire-our teachers never having seen a Camel before-" Is it possible that skeleton can represent an animal with a huge hump on his back?" They will either say "We know not"; or prove from the bony structure that the hump is an absurdity almost approaching the impossible.

Try a Lion, a Tiger, request an explanation of the osteological differences which constitute the one a Lion-frame, the other a Tiger-frame. They have no explanation.

Respectfully ask why, during the whole controversy about man-like apes, we were not told that these apes have a huge air-sack packed away in front of the wind-pipe, and amongst the muscles of the neck, rendering the man-like apes very unman-like, and utterly unable to speak: so that we are not of them, nor they of us? If they knew of this, why were we not informed? If they did not know, it was ignorance that exalted the monkey and abased the man. Knowing, moreover, that the power of uttering articulate words is not found in races possessing structures nearest in likeness to man's; but in creatures, such as Parrots, with vocal organs so different to ours that it is not easy to trace the analogous parts; surely, our scientific teachers ought to remember what Pascal said "It is dangerous to show man how much he resembles the beast, without, at the same time, indicating his own greatness."

We accept evolution so far as verification warrants; but when those who profess to explain everything lower than man until there is "no essential difference between the drowning of a superfluous baby, and a superfluous kitten "for no faith means no morals ultimately, we disregard these

"Cassell's Natural History," p. 67: Dr P. M. Duncan, F.R.S.

Assertion as to Matter.

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teachers of little science and of less faith. We are sure that there is "an end worth living for an end that is supremely good for us to gain, and supremely ill for us to lose—an end that we can only gain by virtue, and must lose by vice."

The case, as to folly, may be viewed with somewhat more largeness.

Physical Science, properly so called, concerns the relations between natural phenomena and their physical antecedents. The investigation is conducted by processes of mathematical reasoning as to whatever regards quantity and conditions of space. A lower department of natural science, phenomenology, examines and classifies phenomena; and infers, by induction, their laws. These laws cannot, however, be determined as the necessary results of physical energies until so interpreted by the higher science. The subordinate science has of late invaded the province of the higher; and, no longer servant, masterfully asserts, with high-sounding phrases, that though the world was not made, in any proper sense of making, all powers are mechanical, all mysteries can be explained by the laws of tangible matter and its energy.1

On examination, we find no clear evidence in favour of this wide assertion. Matter, simple as it may seem, "is the complex of so many relations, a conjuncture of so many events, a synthesis of so many sensations, that to know one Real thoroughly would only be possible through an intuition embracing the universe." 2 We find even that scientific conviction of the objective reality of matter is discovered only by experiment under the guidance of mind; and that Heat, Light, Sound, Electric currents, are real and objective existences though, not matter, but forms of energy. A shadow, or reflection, is real-though not a solid; a motion is real, though not a substance; a feeling is real, though neither sub

stance nor motion.

As to scientific conception of matter, we find it convenient, in mathematical reasoning, to dispense with the ordinary meaning of the word; and, in place of the hard atom, to suppose a mere geometrical point "with repulsive and at1 Church Quarterly, April 1876.

"Problems of Life and Mind," vol. i. p. 343: Geo. Henry Lewes.

tractive energies tending towards or from a certain point,— but nothing at the point." These points are fictions without relations, solidity, extension, or colour. Nor is that all, physicist and metaphysicist both admit that we never touch matter, never see it, never hear it: our perceptions are symbols of the externals, but are not more like them, and have no more community of kind, than a numerical figure has to the form of the numbered objects; indeed, our sensations are merely mental affections which are called up by impulses on the nerves. Our notion of Matter, as well as of Mind, "is the notion of a perpetual something, contrasted with the perpetual flux of the sensations and other feelings or mental states which we refer to it; a something which we figure as remaining the same, while the particular feelings, through which it reveals its existence, change." On one side is the world of forms, of colours, of movements; on the other is a mirror which reflects their images; not in any respect a plain transcript, but an ideal picture of external order. Sensations, terror, hope, calculations, are psychical phenomena associated with molecular motions set up in a previously prepared brain; but we do not know the causal connection, if any, between the objective and subjective-between molecular motion and the state of consciousness. In astronomical speculations, likewise, we take into account dark stars, scattered through space, hidden from observation not being luminous; so, in everything around and within us, innumerable hidden factors are at work; and he is a rash man, no true philosopher, who asserts-" Matter is the beginning and end of all."

Indeed it may be demonstrated that the mechanical theory utterly fails to explain the origin of the world. The following experiment seems to have been made first of all by Prof. P. G. Tait:

Suppose that we have a wooden box: at one end is a large hole, we remove the wood from the opposite end, and in place of it affix a tightly stretched towel. To make the air visible, when expelled from the box, sprinkle the bottom of the box

1 An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, p. 205: John Stuart Mill.

with strong solution of ammonia; then put into the box a dish containing common salt, and over the salt pour sulphuric acid of commerce. We have now in the box ammoniacal gas and muriatic acid gas, they combine and form solid sal ammoniac; and whatever escapes, that is visible, from the box, consists of small particles of sal ammoniac; and they remain suspended like smoke in the air. Now give a sudden blow to the end that is opposite the hole in the box; and, at once, a circular vortex ring moves, as if it were an independent solid, through the room. Observe, when two vortex rings impinge upon one another they vibrate like solid elastic rings. This vibration of a vortex ring can be produced, without any impact on another, by simply making an elliptical or even a square hole instead of the circular. The circle is the equilibrium form of a simple vortex, and if a simple vortex be produced of other than circular form, it will vibrate about the circular form as about a position of equilibrium.

The application of this experiment will yield important results.

It is a fact, discovered by Helmholzt's researches, that if the air was a perfect fluid-if there was no fluid-friction in it— that vortex-ring would go on moving for ever; and the portion of fluid containing the smoke would remain for ever the same set of particles; and could not be made by any process, except an act of creative power, to unite with the air in the room. Now if we adopt the supposition of Sir William Thomson, that the universe is full of this perfect fluid, something not like matter, but which really is matter, "this property of rotation may be the basis of all that appeals to our senses as matter;" indeed, that which we call "matter" may be only rotating portions of something which fills spacevortex-motions of an everywhere present fluid; but nothing less than creative power could produce a vortex-ring in a perfect fluid; consequently no mechanical theory, apart from creative power, can explain that which appeals as matter to our senses; or sufficiently account for the origin of the world.

In the whole of this process of reasoning concerning a perfect fluid and vortex-motion, we have been thinking of matter apart from its usual properties-putting ourselves outside of