has an owner and proprietor other than himself; the man is a co-proprietor; and his ownership is subordinate to that of his The Atheist is sole lord of himself; he is

Master in him.

himself his lord. carries them out.

This latter estate has some privileges, and

Being his own, he can do, and does, what

he likes with his own.

Each several Atheist is in himself a seed, and is limited by the size of his own will and courage. Original Atheists of governmental capacity invent far-reaching powers applicable to the fields of their life and action. And Atheism is social and congregational, as what is not? therefore a world in itself, with a government, laws and institutions. In this world, being absolute, it is a godless god, and may do all it can.

It becomes

Like every seed, its first and abiding aim is to transcend its own limits, which are as wide as matter, but with a felt narrowness co-extensive with the width. With a philosophy of its own, it beats against the bars of death by the creed of a social in lieu of an individual immortality. With peculiar arts and sciences it works to lengthen individual life to any degree beyond the present span. It would not discard a thousand years as a proper enjoyment of this world. And here some of its bodily privileges come in. Judging by the rule of Autocracy, it is a present king in Medicine. This is exemplified in experimentation on the poor, to educate the life-prolongers in their work for the poor and the rich. Being, as we postulate, absolute, that is to say, within the sphere of the mutable social conscience, and having its own, and all our lives, for an end; it is in its own right, lord over the animal creation, and may do to the subjects of it whatever it considers will conduce to its arts towards individual immortality. All within social permissions, which mean at first laws of the land, fellowship with profitable Christians, and at last through Atheistic ages, respectability, whatever that may mean, as a residual terminus. If cutting up men alive, as Erasistratus did, could presumably lengthen the average of human life,

Atheism can perform it with a free hand. The social con

None but an injudicious

science is the only limit here. Atheist would vivisect his own reputation. No one but an unsocial Atheist would injure the reputation of his clan. Yet, as regards the disposal of Life, Atheism has no more undeniable privilege than the right of Suicide. The circumambient social conscience may limit this right somewhat, but it is there for occasions, and the Atheist has only to balance the inconvenience and pain of the mortal immortality around him, against his own propensity, and to determine accordingly. To be, or not to be, that is the question. His life is his own absolutely, and the end of it is his own if his will is made up, there is no power to say him nay. Others may kill themselves in madness or intolerable states when their God is not audible. He can end himself in ordinary, because he prefers it. Who is there to give the reason to? "There are no bonds in his death." There is nothing after it.

Atheism has also an indefeasible right to patronize any and every religion for the simple and the vulgar, on the way to their emancipation into the atheistical light. It can be a church-conservative, and make the lower orders powerless for mischief to itself by keeping them in the darkness of religion.

Next, Atheism, besides its care for its corporeal body, its dignities and pleasures, looks after its own soul which also is its body. It cannot do without a soul in present Society. Looking round for a soul, it finds one made to its hand in various religions, and lays claim to it. To conscience, and the virtues which lie under it, and spring from it, it lays strong claim. It is under no restraint of commandments in annexing the good things of the world, and conscience is the best of all things socially. Atheism appropriates it in this sense, and walks proudly in the light of its fellow-men, and of all men. This conscience with its virtues is mutable from time to time, and Atheism

lives in its rigour when respectable, and in its relaxations and indulgences in looser times. Being a law to itself there is no denying this, and no helping it. So Atheism has a time-soul. Its privilege here is to acquire it, and to turn it to social gain.

Atheism demands a society not too remote at a given time from the present codes. This it finds ready to hand in the society around us, and which, though no product of atheism, it is not prevented from appropriating as its soil. For what principle prevents it from appropriating? Expostulation is out of place with the masters of legions, and atheism, not being an internal potentate, does not, except through pressure from without, expostulate with itself. It therefore adopts property, marriage, family, country, the laws and the State, as social needs, and calls them its own. And the more readily, because being now creations of its mouth, it has only to bide its time, and utter them differently, or repeal them, according to its new wills and lights. Being itself its author and its throne, it is clearly absolute from age to age in these material things. So Atheism stands in social costume with the privilege of appropriating from a wide world of religious modes, and putting on from time to time from their stores what is becoming.

Atheism has also the privilege of providing itself. with Goodness; a mystical quality which it must possess. Here its supplies are large. With its faculty of appropriation,— for it is the great Proprium in all men,-it is the realm of present free trade with all religions, and claims all their goods, bartering in exchange for their commodity freedom from the religions themselves which have supplied the old corn and wine. It will keep the goods as long as it wants them, and Nature will be its greater source for the next supplies.

Atheism, being its own Truth, leans on nothing but itself for truth in the general acceptation. It does not borrow

this from religions, but is a light unto itself. Here in its avowal of its name its honesty shines. Nature is its truth, and Science its high priest of nature. It loses nothing of respectability by declining scientific commerce with religions, for nature of itself knows nothing of them, and science is a neutral field of knowledges. But it has its compensation in a privilege of hypotheses and fancies all its own. With these it fills its world: fills it so that no room is left for theologies. These hypotheses it has stamped from of old with its own absoluteness, and they are in general currency. Such bills of sale are the eternity of the world; the infinity of matter, space and time; the materiality of mind; the production of life from nature. These are its instruments by which it brings within its grasp a multitude of corresponding particulars. Their realm is its fairy gold minted for its autocratic treasury into certainties. For Atheism would be poor without its facts, and these are they. It comes thus into the privilege of speculation and belief: and appropriates eternity and infinity as peculiarly its own. For who sees an end of its space, or notes a beginning of its time.

Its absoluteness privileges Atheism to demand a Cultus. For what other ground for Cultus or Worship has any religion than the affirmation of a supreme Being, and the Atheist, -individual in small things, and collective in great things, -is a supreme being, an absolute self? His privilege therefore lies in the worship of himself. For hypothetical endowment and establishment here, all the absolute little selves make one general unselfishness; like finite inches making up spatial infinitude.

Atheism is neither King nor Priest, neither Order nor Law, excepting as it is circumpressed by these passing expedients but the Atheist is an essential politician. The hoary mountain of religion oppressing his breast makes him glow and smoke and erupt, and the ground reverberates with him. He is ruminating a world of new ages in which

he himself will be all in all. No one as he is privileged for the work of change, of abolition and demolition. The old world is a tradition of mummeries; its states and institutions are the sum of them. He stands among them, but is not of them. He holds no principle or affection which respects them excepting as temporary needs ministering to his honour, glory, and gain. He is a typical reformer privileged to put on the present as a garment, and to tear it to pieces when he can. His following in all the above privileges is vast, unbeknown to itself. For the wind of Atheism is a strong wind, and can carry away churches and states that are not founded upon the opposite Rock. And in the present non-foundation, Atheism has its day of genius, and a large privilege of hopes and expectations in the politic secular belly of accidents, occasions and opportunities.

LIII.-THE FERTILIZATION OF FLOWERS BY INSECTS.

Thinking much of the train of observations of the illustrious Naturalist, Darwin, on the above subject, the wonder occurs that they were not made before; for the facts are as patent now as the flowers and the insects always Can it be that the common human eyes are holden for an appointed time; and that as there is a time for everything, there is a time naturally for opening them?

were.

Note here a higher realm of life and organism conjoined by ministry to a lower. The lower is enriched by it, gifted with new colours and varieties as if so much light and chemistry were born of the warmth of the conjunction. Nor only that, but the plant-systems are perpetuated and extended in area where otherwise they might die out. Male and female flowers would oftener be abortive, and engender no seeds, if there were not winged go-betweens to carry the fertilizing spur from the one to the other. It is a provision for fixed