I can about the existence of life on the moon. But I do say
that this contempt for that which has been already discovered-this
carelessness about induction from the normal phenomena, coupled with
this hankering after theories built upon exceptional ones-this
craving for 'signs and wonders,' which is the sure accompaniment of
a dying faith in God, and in nature as God's work-are symptoms which
make me tremble for the fate of physical as well as of spiritual
science, both in America and in the Americanists here at home. As
the Professor talked on, I could not help thinking of the neo-
Platonists of Alexandria, and their exactly similar course-downward
from a spiritualism of notions and emotions, which in every term
confessed its own materialism, to the fearful discovery that
consciousness does not reveal God, not even matter, but only its own
existence; and then onward, in desperate search after something
external wherein to trust, towards theurgic fetish worship, and the
secret virtues of gems and flowers and stars; and, last of all, to
the lowest depth of bowing statues and winking pictures. The sixth
century saw that career, Templeton; the nineteenth may see it re-
enacted, with only these differences, that the Nature-worship which
seems coming will be all the more crushing and slavish, because we
know so much better how vast and glorious Nature is; and that the
superstitions will be more clumsy and foolish in proportion as our
Saxon brain is less acute and discursive, and our education less
severely scientific, than those of the old Greeks."

"Silence, raver!" cried Templeton, throwing himself on the grass in
fits of laughter. "So the Professor's grandchildren will have
either turned Papists, or be bowing down before rusty locomotives
and broken electric telegraphs? But, my good friend, you surely do
not take Professor Windrush for a fair sample of the great American
people?"

"God forbid that so unpractical a talker should be a sample of the
most practical people upon earth. The Americans have their
engineers, their geographers, their astronomers, their scientific
chemists; few indeed, but such as bid fair to rival those of any
nation upon earth. But these, like other true workers, hold their
tongues and do their business."

"And they have a few indigenous authors too: you must have read the
'Biglow Papers,' and the 'Fable for Critics,' and last but not
least, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'?"

"Yes; and I have had