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page of as pure fancies as ever entered Don Quixote's brain, he emerges with what he calls the "formula," that nerves are formed by the passage of motion along lines of least resistance. Observe the little difficulties which Mr. Spencer has not deigned to notice. It is very important that nerves should be just where they are. Now how did it happen that in that mass of "undifferentiated tissues" the "some place where molecular motion is liberated," and the "some place where it is absorbed," happened to be just the places between which nervous connection is needed? Consider the marvelous interlacing of the nerves, and how necessary that complexity is for the needs of the structure; and then tell us how it came to pass that the "lines of least resistance" arranged themselves so happily. There is no à priori necessity for such an arrangement; on the contrary, there is the very strongest à priori improbability against it. The bare possibility is a thing of chance, and that of the infinitesimal order; while the argument is based upon the purest imagination. Surely it requires no small amount of nerve to manufacture nerves in this fanciful fashion; and then parade the result as having the exactness of science and the certitude of demonstration. The only thing more astonishing is, that it should ever have been believed.

But we are tired of pursuing weakness and folly further, or we might add pages of similar absurdities. We do not mean to deny that there is much that is ingenious and valuable in Mr. Spencer's work; but we do say that when stripped of their seeming science, his explanations are just those that atheism has always given, chance and time. These are the great wonder-workers. Let us sum up. We have seen that the philosophical principles of Part I. and II. are in absolute contradiction; that if Part I. is true, Part II. must be sent to the limbo of "pseudo-ideas"; while, if Part II. is true, the sentence of banishment against religious ideas must be recalled. We have seen that the positive proof of the correlation of the physical with the vital and mental forces is of the weakest kind, even if there were no opposing evidence; while in addition, we have seen that it is in plainest opposition to undoubted facts. We have further seen that the same mental law which warrants the belief in external power, also warrants the resolution of

that power into Divine volition. Finally, we have seen that, even granting to Mr. Spencer his impersonal force, his proof that it is capable of doing the work of intelligence, is a compound of scientific terms and the purest romance. That such a book should have held a prominent position in science for nearly ten years is the best example we can recall of the "Stability of the Heterogeneous." The future may assign it a place in the "Poetry of Science;" we are confident that it will give it no higher position.

When any doctrine, however dear, is disproved, we are going to give it up. As friends bear their dead forth to the green fields, and lay the cherished forms forever out of sight; so, when science renders it impossible for us longer to hold them, we will gather up our most cherished beliefs, and bury them forever. We seek truth, though it leave us and the world orphans; and write on every tombstone, "Death is an eternal sleep." But we have no apprehensions of such a result. Again and again has the death of the Living God been proclaimed; but in every case it proved that the wish, not reason, was father to the thought. Times innumerable has religion been overthrown; but still the devout soul kneels and prays. Aye more, as in the retreat of the Ten Thousand, the weapons the enemy cast into our camp we have used to kindle our fires. We would not now have back the old conceptions, if they could be had for the wishing. No one would now wish, in the interests of piety, to set up the date of creation 4004 B. C.; or to restore the crystal firmament with its points of light. The long times of geology seem sublimest symbols of His infinite years. The flashing splendors of the skies, the ponderous orbs, the blazing suns, the measureless distances, the mighty periods, how much more worthy of the Creator do these seem than the pitiful, peep-show heaven for which the Church once contended? The steady laws, impressive types of His fixed thought, are enemies no longer. Never before was the universe so fit an abode of the God we love as it is to-day. Never did the heavens so declare the glory of God as they do now. The most impressive lesson of the past is, to fear nothing that is real, and to despair of nothing that is good. It bids us lay aside the secret scepticism of our own teachings, which is at

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once our weakness and our disgrace, and fear nothing, either from the truth, or for it. We listen without dread for the worst word that science or anything else can utter; and we are confident that, when that word shall have been uttered, the devout soul will still have the warrant of reason, as well as of faith, for joining in that ancient ascription of praise to "the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, and the only Wise God.”

ARTICLE II.-IN MEMORIAM. — PROFESSOR JAMES

HADLEY.*

PROFESSOR JAMES HADLEY was born in Fairfield, Herkimer County, New York, March 30, 1821. This town was for many years the seat of a flourishing Medical Institution, in which his father, at the time of his birth, was Professor of Chemistry. There was also in the town a well known Academy, which during Prof. Hadley's childhood and youth was under the care of Rev. Dr. David Chassel, a man of Scotch descent and Scotch characteristics. Dr. Chassel was Prof. Hadley's sole instructor, aside from the members of his own household, with one or two inconsiderable exceptions, from the age of seven years until he entered college. Of Dr. Chassel he always spoke with great affection and respect. The household abounded in intellectual activities and stimulating excitements, and was filled with the atmosphere of sympathy and love. He was from the first a child of delicate organization, as is the wont of great scholars, and from very early years became the pride and pet of the village. He was a bright-eyed and frolicsome boy, caring for several years more for play than for study, though his quick observation, his rapid acquisitions, and his tenacious memory, distinguished him very early above all his peers. When he was nine years old he was afflicted with a white swelling upon his knee, the consequence of a casual injury, which was followed by a year and a half of severe suffering, and disabled him for life. During this long and painful illness, he still held his place of preeminence, his playmates vying with one another for the privilege of trundling the bright-eyed sufferer in his invalid's carriage. "Sweet are the uses of adversity," and these sweet uses are manifold, but in no respect are they more conspicuous than in the lives of men eminent for literary achievements. Many a random blow-an unlucky accident, as it would be called,—has developed and matured a great genius, by sharpening the wits, by turning the mind in on itself, by chastening the feelings,

* A discourse delivered at the funeral services, November 18, 1872.

by shutting up the roving and scattered thoughts to books, reflection and imaginative power, or determining the sufferer to a secluded and bookish life. So it was with Prof. Hadley. As a mere child he had indeed never misspelled a word, and in learning to read, had tasked himself to read the earliest sentence which he mastered with the letters inverted. He had also begun Latin at seven, but it was not till his early discipline of seclusion and suffering was perfected, at the age of ten and a half or eleven years, that he gave himself to study and to books. From that time his life was that of a systematic and energetic scholar. He did not abandon play. Nothing could repress the exuberance of his spirits or the force of his bodily activity. He soon learned with or without his crutch to perform feats of surprising agility. But his papers show that as early as fourteen he began to map out the work of his days and weeks, and that his scheme of study was most liberal and involved severe effort. He edited a literary newspaper, furnishing the matter for entire numbers himself and writing these out in the fair chirography which he acquired by self-schooling. These papers are still preserved and abound in various and sprightly jeux d'esprit in prose and verse, on topics humerous and grave, such as all boys delight in. At the age of fifteen he picked up a Hebrew Chrestomathy, and, with some help, taught himself the elements of the Hebrew language. At about this age he occasionally heard the recitations of his own class, and the scene is well remembered when this slender and delicate boy sat upon the knee of one of his classmates, and heard the lesson through. None of us can doubt that he heard it thoroughly and keenly, and boldly scrutinized the work of his stalwart associates. A little later Dr. Chassel made him his assistant in hearing some of the classes. The next three years he served acceptably as a regularly elected assistant in the school. At the age of nineteen and a half, he entered Yale College, coming hither at his own suggestion. His father and brother were graduates of other colleges, and his mother naturally shrunk from sending this delicate and darling son so far away among strangers. But he insisted on coming, because he thought he should find here what he desired. He applied for admission to the Junior class. President Woolsey examined him in Greek, and after hearing him read a little and

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