The Fremont weekly journal. [volume] (Fremont, Sandusky County, Ohio) 1867-1877, 1873-02-28
ZEE souRcn o. TH1Nes.
Speech Of Park Goodwin. at the Tin
dali Banquet in New york

all is not science that bears the name
Dean Swift, in his day, humorouslv
complained that Grub street had mi
grated to the Royal Society. Wei
we cannot say that things are as
bad as that, but certainly there are
some ragged and suspicious looking
fellows lurking about the premises,
and as the duty of the Press like
Dog5eT7y, was to comprehend all
vagrams-we so bid these stand.
For example, a German doctor was
around the other day, who informed
US that with matter and force he
could very easily reconstruct every
thing there is in the universe. He
did not tell Us what matter and force
are, apart from the mind which con
ceives them as phenominal relations,
but he was sure Of his point, and
that was enough. 1t was not, how
ever, an original notion.
That learned traveller, DR.. Lemuel
Gulliver, in his authentic and vera
eious, narrative, called a aVoyage to
Lapula," " encounters a doctor Of the
Academy of Lagoda, who was quite
up to this modern mark. He DO
ssessed a machine, of which the
drawings are given, into which you
might throw a vocabulary, some bits
OF wood and a few pieces Of paper,
and then, by turning a crank, out Of
those rough materials would come a
whole body Of the arts and sciences
folio volumes of philosophy, po-
etry, politics and law-printed and
bound, all complete, without any ex-
pense of labor or any assistance from
genius and study. You will say this
is ridiculous; but it is not a wLit
more so than those recent theories,
which would account for the univer-
sal frame Of things every part Of a
sculptured order and q luscious beau
ty, every part teeming with an intel
igence that moves our wonder and
delight-on mere mechanical prin-
ciples.
Then, there is another of these
outside teachers Of science, but this
one is entitled to the highest respect
though I think he rides q hobby
beyond the capacity Of the creature
to carry-Who contrived a vast pro-
cess of cosmic evolutions, who tells
US that great while ago-ten thous-
and years-no, hundred million of
millions of years ago-a nebulous
gas was difused through the i'm
mensity of space, which first twisted
itself into a solar system, then into
a world, then into layers of mineral
strata, then into vegetable sporules,
into animal motions, into human
vortices called societies, into uiads,
Parthenons, and Shakespeare, and at
last into a grand philosophy Of evo-
lution-the crown and eonsumma-
ton Of the whole; which may all be
true, though the birth strikes me as
hardly worthy ofso long and so tre-
mendous a parturition. Again,
third conYinees himself and his ad-
mirers that the universe is consider
ably defective, and that, like Alphon-
Sc of CASTLE, if he had been consul
ted in the making Of it, he could
have given many useful hints to-
ward its improvement; and SO, too,
when the deepest human instinct in
all ages have repeated what the He
brew peasant said, gazing into the
clear depths of the Eastern skies,
''the heavens declare the glory Of
God, and the armament showeth his
handiwork," cries, "Pish! the heav-
ems declare the glory of Copernicus,
Kepler and Newton"
Then here is another French lit
erateur, who, with all his undeniable
merits, masquerades a little too
much in the habiliments of science,
who are very sure that Mind and
Motion are but the diverse sides Of
the same essential phenomenon, the
one coming in by the front door Of
the consciousness, and the other by
the back door Of the senses. When
you talk, he says, Of the martyrs
faith, the heroic devotion, the moth
er's love, the poets fancy, the artists
genius, the lovers rapture, you are
only giving so many different names
to so many different movements OF
little. molecules in the brain; up,
down, hither, thither, this way, that
way, ETC.. but my opinion is that the
ingenious gentleman, when he comes
to the truth of the case, viii find
that what he terms molecules are
only maggots, of which a very fne
specimen has found a cradle and
home in his own capacious Uranium.
This is a clear case of Grub street,
as a friend remarks getting into the
Royal Society. Now, if this be sci
ence, we must exclaim with the
poet:
Dbl Star eyed Science, hast thou wandered
there,
To watt us home the message of despair
Is this all the tidings We bring
rom the empyrean? What! is there
nothing as the central wheel of life
Dut a blind, dumb, insensible, IN
movable face-a face without love,
intelligence, without desire
and purpose, an eyeless Sampson,
which goes grinding on forever at
MS mill, and crushing onward fOreV-
n in the fruitless battle against
leath, and nothing new? (Applause)
"Great Godw as Wordsworth
Iays:
Great God I'd rather be
\ Pagan, sucked in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make less forlorn,
have sight of Proteus, rising the sea,
)r hear old Triton blow his Wreathed hornl