question answers itself: Life, or mechanism-which? [Applause.] Here is the last white and mottled bird that flew to us out of the tall Tribune tower; and softly folded under its wing are these words concerning Darwin from Thomas Carlyle at his own fireside in London: "Sc-called literary and scientific classes in England now proudly give themselves to protoplasm, origin of species, and the like, to prove that God did not build the universe. I have known three generations of the Darwins, — grandfather, father, and son, atheists all." [I do not call Darwin an atheist; but this testimony is very significant.] "The brother of the present famous naturalist, a quiet man, who lives not far from here, told me that among his grandfather's effects he found a seal engraven with this legend, Omnia ex conchis' (every thing from a clam-shell'). I saw the naturalist not many months ago; told him that I had read his 'Origin of the Species,' and other books; that he had by no means satisfied me that men were descended from monkeys, but had gone far toward persuading me that he and his so-called scientific brethren had brought the present generation of Englishmen very near to monkeys. A good sort of man is this Darwin, and well meaning, but with very little intellect. Ah! it is a sad and terrible thing to see nigh a whole generation of men and women professing to be cultivated, looking around in a purblind fashion, and finding no God in this universe. I suppose it is a re-action from the reign of cant and hollow pre - tence, professing to believe what in fact they do not believe. And this is what we have got: all things from frog-spawn; the gospel of dirt the order of the day. The older I grow, and I now stand upon the brink of eternity, the more comes back to me the sentence in the catechism, which I learned when a child, and the fuller and deeper its meaning becomes, 'What is the great end of man? To glorify God, and enjoy him forever.' No gospel of dirt, teaching that men have descended from frogs through monkeys, can ever set that aside " (Daily Tribune, Nov. 4, 1876. Extract from a letter from Carlyle published in Scotland, and quoted in the London Times). Will haughty Boston, will the colleges of New England, will tender and thoughtful souls everywhere, listen to Thomas Carlyle as he stands upcn the brink of eternity? [Applause.] VII. DOES DEATH END ALL? INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION. THE FIFTY-SECOND LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN TREMONT TEMPLE NOV. 13. "DIE Nothwendigkeit für zwei unvergleichbare Kreise von Erscheinungen zunächst zwei gesonderte Erklärungsgründe zu verlangen, verbot uns jeden Versuch, aus Wirkungen materieller Stoffe, so fern sie materiel sind, das innere Leben als einen selbstverstandlichen Erfolg ableiten zu wollen."-HERMANN Lotze, Mikrokosmus, I., 186. "ATTENTION to those philosophical questions which underlie all Science, is as rare as it is needful."- PROFESSOR T. H. HUXLEY, Contemporary Review, Nov., 1871, p. 443. VII. DOES DEATH END ALL? INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION. IF the Greeks had possessed the microscope, they would in all probability never have been thrown into debate over the famous question of their philosophy, whether the relation of the soul to the body is that of harmony to a harp, or of a rower to a boat (PLATO, Phaedon). According to the former of these two theories, the music must cease when the harp is broken: according to the latter, the rower may survive, although his boat is destroyed. He may be completely safe, even when his frail vessel, splintered by all the surges and lightnings, rots on the tusks of the reefs, or sinks in the fathomless waste, or dissolves to be blown about the world by the howling seas. In the one case, death does, in the other it does not, end all. Dim as was to the Greeks of Pericles' day the whole field which science has entered with the microscope for the first time in the last fifty years, all their greatest poets and philosophers held that the relation of the soul to the body is that of the rower to a boat. This was the common metaphor as men conversed on this theme under the Acropolis two |