ot 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 stu