But if the Jesuit notion be rejected, what are we to accept? Physiologists say that every human being comes from an egg not more than the 1/120th of an inch in diameter. Is this egg matter? I hold it to be so, as much as the seed of a fern or of an oak. Nine months go to the making of it into a man. Are the additions made during this period of gestation drawn from matter? I think so undoubtedly. If there be anything besides matter in the egg, or in the infant subsequently slumbering in the womb, what is it? The questions already asked with reference to the stars of snow may be here repeated. Mr. Martineau will complain that I am disenchanting the babe of its wonder; but is this the case? I figure it growing in the womb, woven by a something not itself, without conscious participation on the part of either father or mother, and appearing in due time a living miracle, with all its organs and all their implications. Consider the work accomplished during these nine months in forming the eye alone — with its lens, and its humours, and its miraculous retina behind. Consider the ear with its tympanum, cochlea, and Corti's organ — an instrument of three thousand strings, built adjacent to the brain, and employed by it to sift, separate, and interpret, antecedent to all consciousness, the sonorous tremors of the external world. All this has been accomplished, not only without man's contrivance, but without his knowledge, the secret of his own organisation having been withheld from him since his birth in the immeasurable past, until these latter days. Matter I define as that mysterious thing by which all this is accomplished. How it came to have this power is a question on which I never ventured an opinion. If, then, Matter starts as 'a beggar,' it is, in my view, because the Jacobs of theology have deprived it of its birthright. Mr. Martineau need fear no disenchantment. Theories of evolution go but a short way towards the explanation of this mystery; the Ages, let us hope, will at length give us a Poet competent to deal with it aright.
There are men, and they include amongst them some of the best of the race of man, upon whose minds this mystery falls without producing either warmth or colour. The 'dry light' of the intellect suffices for them, and they live their noble lives untouched by a desire to give the mystery shape or expression. There are, on the other hand, men whose minds are warmed and coloured by its presence, and who, under its stimulus, attain to moral heights which have never been overtopped. Different spiritual climates are necessary for the healthy existence of these two classes of men; and different climates must be accorded them. The history of humanity, however, proves the experience of the second class to illustrate the most pervading need. The world will have religion of some kind, even though it should fly for it to the intellectual whoredom of 'spiritualism.' What is really wanted is the lifting power of an ideal element in human life. But the free play of this power must be preceded by its release from the practical materialism of the present, as well as from the torn swaddling bands of the past. It is now in danger of being stupefied by the one, or strangled by the other. I look, however, forward to a time when the strength, insight, and elevation which now visit us in mere hints and glimpses, during moments 'of clearness and vigour,' shall be the stable and permanent possession of purer and mightier minds than ours — purer and mightier, partly because of their deeper knowledge of matter and their more faithful conformity to its laws.
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