acknowledged and insisted on the
smallness of our knowledge, or rather the depth of our ignorance, as
regards the whole system of the universe. My object was to show my
deistical friends, who set forth so eloquently the beauty and
beneficence of Nature and the Ruler thereof, while they had nothing
but scorn for the so-called absurdities of the Christian scheme, that
they were in no better condition than we were, and that, for every
difficulty found upon our side, quite as great a difficulty was to be
found upon theirs. I will now, with your permission, adopt a similar
line of argument. You are a Lucretian, and from the combination and
separation of insensate atoms deduce all terrestrial things, including
organic forms and their phenomena. Let me tell you in the first
instance how far I am prepared to go with you. I admit that you can
build crystalline forms out of this play of molecular force; that the
diamond, amethyst, and snow-star are truly wonderful structures which
are thus produced. I will go farther and acknowledge that even a tree
or flower might in this way be organised. Nay, if you can show me an
animal without sensation, I will concede to you that it also might be
put together by the suitable play of molecular force.

'Thus far our way is clear, but now comes my difficulty. Your atoms
are individually without sensation, much more are they without
intelligence. May I ask you, then, to try your hand upon this
problem. Take your dead hydrogen atoms, your dead oxygen atoms, your
dead carbon atoms, your dead nitrogen atoms, your dead phosphorus
atoms, and all the other atoms, dead as grains of shot, of which the
brain is formed. Imagine them separate and sensationless; observe
them running together and forming all imaginable combinations. This,
as a purely mechanical process, is seeable by the mind. But can you
see, or dream, or in any way imagine, how out of that mechanical act,
and from these individually dead atoms, sensation, thought, and
emotion are to rise? Are you likely to extract Homer out of the
rattling of dice, or the Differential Calculus out of the clash of
billiard-balls? I am not all bereft of this Vorstellungs-Kraft of
which you speak, nor am I, like so many of my brethren, a mere vacuum
as regards scientific knowledge. I can follow a particle of musk
until it reaches the olfactory nerve; I can follow the waves of sound
until their tremors reach the water of the labyrinth, and se