So extensive is the field of human knowledge, so many and wide apart are the spots at which ground has been broken, and so evident is the necessity for men to be special in their studies if they would be thoroughly masters of their subjects, that there is no little danger lest workers in one department may be unappreciated by, if not actually unknown to, those who are employed in another part. Any one who will give his attention to the matter may observe examples of lines of investigation, which have really close relations, and the results of which might be of mutual aid, running side by side, like parallel lines, without meeting. Accordingly, M. Comte was of opinion that there was needed a new order of scientific men, whose function it should be to bring together and co-ordinate the results of the different workers; and it is plain that such an organisation must be effected somehow. But great mischief would of a certainty result from men specially undertaking this work: unless they are thoroughly and practically grounded in some science, unless they have plodded in patient and tedious investigation, they are almost sure to go astray into vain and seductive speculations, which are never definite enough to be useful, are often enticing enough to be mischievous. If a valuable idea is perchance hit upon, it is potential rather than real, as a statue is potential in a block of marble, though it has yet to be hewn out; it is so shrouded in theoretical haze, and so much wanting in exactness, that it is of no value until the patient work of the practical men has defined it, put it in its proper place, and so to speak guaranteed its worth. Even Goethe, exceptionally powerful as his mind was, and much as he worked, owed his scientific troubles and his scientific errors to a want of practical knowledge. Those who have not had a scientific training must lack the scientific imagination.

An eye-witness of this remarkable phenomenon, the Ulster Revival of 1859, I should wish to dilate, yet a little, upon it, ere the period for doing so passes entirely away. The agitation which it engendered still lingers somewhat. And as like causes produce like effects, more revivals may perhaps be anticipated, when the seeds so profusely scattered shall experience with time the requisite development.

It is now many years since I stumbled, by the merest accident, on this very important question:

“Hath nature's soul,
That formed this world so beautiful, that spread
Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smaller chord
Strung to unchanging unison, that gave
The happy birds their dwelling in the grove,
That yielded to the wanderers of the deep
The lovely silence of the unfathomed main,
And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust
With spirit, thought, and love; on man alone
Partial in causeless malice, wantonly
Heaped, ruin, nee, and slavery; his soul
Blasted with withering curses: placed afar
The meteor happiness, that shuns his grasp?”

From the earliest period of his history down to the present day man has ever been an object of eager study to himself. Nevertheless it is questionable whether he has yet succeeded in satisfying himself what he really is. “Everything by turns, and nothing long,” seems to be the conclusion to which one may most safely come after consideration of the numerous definitions which man has at different times seriously given of himself. He has likened himself to most things on earth, and to not a few under the earth. He has, as it were, dissolved himself, tested, precipitated, dried, and weighed himself; he has frequently lost himself, gone in search of himself, traced himself back to an homunculus, and forward to his final disappearance in a general dissolution of his constituent particles. But after making all these and many other experiments upon himself, whether he is the godlike son of Heaven, or an idealised monkey, he has not yet decided.