EDITOR'S TABLE. 



5; 



evidence," and adequate to explain the 

 physical origin of the universe ; while 

 Prof. Clerk Maxwell, according to Dr. 

 McOosh, " discovers, in the very nature 

 and properties of a molecule, a proof of 

 design," thus making the atomic the- 

 ory a help to religion by furnishing 

 evidence of the existence of God. 



It is a noteworthy circumstance, as 

 showing the growth of a hetter state 

 of mind, that the writers we are con- 

 sidering agree in abstaining from the 

 charge of materialism, which has been 

 so freely indulged in by others against 

 Prof. Tyndall. They know that it can- 

 not be maintained ; but, while refrain- 

 ing from the imputation of " gross mate- 

 rialism," it is still implied that he must 

 be some sort of a materialist. The wri- 

 ter in the Penn Monthly expressly ac- 

 quits him of the charge as usually con- 

 strued, by saying, " Prof. Tyndall is not 

 a materialist of the school of De la 

 Mettre and Holbach." He then puts 

 the question, " In what sense, then, is 

 Prof. Tyndall a materialist, if he be one 

 at all? " and replies : " In the sense of 

 being a naturalist ;" and this term is 

 again used in a vague and unusual sense. 

 But it were better to have allowed Prof. 

 Tyndall to explain his own position, 

 which he has done in the most explicit 

 manner. It is now generally under- 

 stood, as the writer just quoted implies, 

 that the term "materialism" is used 

 with different significations, and Prof. 

 Tyndall has qualified the form of it 

 which he maintains as " scientific mate- 

 rialism." This consists simply in as- 

 cribing higher powers and possibilities 

 to matter than hitherto, and not in sink- 

 ing mind in matter, or in asserting the 

 materiality of mind in the name of sci- 

 entific authority. In an address, deliv- 

 ered before the mathematical and phys- 

 ical section of the British Association 

 held in Norwich, in 1868, 1 Professor 

 Tyndall took exactly the same ground 

 that he assumed last August at Belfast ; 



1 This interesting discourse has been added 

 as an Appendix to the last American edition of 

 the Belfast Address. 



and passages from the discourse were 

 widely quoted at the time as containing 

 the most decisive disavowal and dis- 

 proof of materialism in its usually ac- 

 cepted sense. Our reviewers should 

 have reproduced the following portion ; 

 and, as they have not, we supply the 

 omission : 



"The relation of physics to conscious- 

 ness being thus invariable, it follows that, 

 given the state of the brain, the correspond- 

 ing thought or feeling might be inferred ; 

 or, given the thought or feeling, the corre- 

 sponding state of the brain might be in- 

 ferred. But how inferred ? It would be at 

 bottom not a case of logical inference at all, 

 but of empirical association. You may re- 

 ply that many of the inferences of science 

 are of this character ; the inference, for ex- 

 ample, that an electric current of a given di- 

 rection will deflect a magnetic needle in a 

 definite way; but the cases differ in this, 

 that the passage from the current to the nee- 

 dle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and 

 that we entertain no doubt as to the final 

 mechanical solution of the problem. But 

 the passage from the physics of the brain 

 to the corresponding facts of consciousness 

 is unthinkable. Granted that a definite 

 thought, and a definite molecular action in 

 the brain, occur simultaneously ; we do not 

 possess the intellectual organ, nor apparent- 

 ly any rudiment of the organ, which would 

 enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, 

 from the one to the other. They appear to- 

 gether, but we do not know why. Were our 

 minds and senses so expanded, strength- 

 ened, and illuminated, as to enable us to see 

 and feel the very molecules of the brain J 

 were we capable of following all their mo- 

 tions, all their groupings, all their electric 

 discharges, if such there be ; and were we 

 intimately acquainted with the correspond- 

 ing states of thought and feeling, we should 

 be as far as ever from the solution of the 

 problem, ' How are these physical processes 

 connected with the facts of consciousness ? ' 

 The chasm between the two classes of phe- 

 nomena would still remain intellectually im- 

 passable. Let the consciousness of love, for 

 example, be associated with a right-handed 

 spiral motion of the molecules of the brain, 

 and the consciousness of hate with a left- 

 handed spiral motion. We should then 

 know when we love that the motion is in 

 one direction, and when we hate that the 

 motion is in the other ; but the ' why ? ' 

 would remain as unanswerable as before. 

 " In affirming that the growth of the body 



