r. His Jesuit colleagues, he
knew, inculcated the belief that every human soul is sent into the
world from God by a separate and supernatural act of creation. In a
work entitled the 'Origin of the Human Soul,' Professor Frohschammer,
the philosopher here alluded to, was hardy enough to question this
doctrine, and to affirm that man, body and soul, comes from his
parents, the act of creation being, therefore, mediate and secondary
only. The Jesuits keep a sharp look out on all temerities of this
kind; and their organ, the 'Civilita Cattolica,' immediately pounced
upon Frohschammer. His book was branded as 'pestilent,' placed in the
Index, and stamped with the condemnation of the Church. [Footnote:
King Maximilian II. brought Liebig to Munich, he helped Helmholtz in
his researches, and loved to liberate and foster science. But through
his liberal concession of power to the Jesuits in the schools, he did
far more damage to the intellectual freedom of his country than his
superstitious predecessor Ludwig I. Priding himself on being a German
Prince, Ludwig would not tolerate the interference of the Roman party
with the political affairs of Bavaria.] The Jesuit notion does not
err on the score of indefiniteness. According to it, the Power whom
Goethe does not dare to name, and whom Gassendi and Clerk Maxwell
present to us under the guise of a 'Manufacturer' of atoms, turns out
annually, for England and Wales alone, a quarter of a million of new
souls. Taken in connection with the dictum of Mr. Carlyle, that this
annual increment to our population are 'mostly fools,' but little
profit to the human heart seems derivable from this mode of regarding
the Divine operations.

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 n