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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



MATTER AND LIFE. 



THE narrow limits of Prof. Tyndall's 

 address, the greatness of the ques- 

 tions it raised, and the diversity of 

 views to which it has given rise, seem 

 to have led to much erroneous inter- 

 pretation of the document. Many news- 

 papers have charged that the speech 

 is an unprecedented and unwarranted 

 aggression upon ground to which sci- 

 ence has no rightful claim, and even 

 the Scientific American describes the 

 position taken by Prof. Tyndall as a 

 "sudden invasion of the neutral terri- 

 tory lying between scientific and reli- 

 gious thought." The passage that has 

 been most constantly quoted and relied 

 upon, to show that Prof. Tyndall has 

 quit his own field and intruded into 

 that which belongs to religion, is where 

 he speaks of " prolonging his vision 

 across the boundary of, the experi- 

 mental evidence. 1 ' But it is easy to 

 show that this passage will bear no 

 such construction; that is, what Prof. 

 Tyndall proposes to do is, exactly what 

 all men of science have been about 

 these hundred years. Let us see what 

 he means, which may be the best done 

 by detaching from the address the full 

 statement in which the passage occurs. 

 Prof. Tyndall says: "Two courses, and 

 two only, are possible. Either let us 

 open our doors freely to the conception 

 of creative acts, or, abandoning them, 

 let us radically change our notions of 

 matter. If we look at matter as pict- 

 ured by Democritus, and as defined 

 for generations in our text-books, the 

 absolute impossibility of any form of 

 life coming out of it would be sufficient 

 to render any other hypothesis prefer- 

 able ; but the definitions of matter given 

 in our text-books were intended to cover 

 its purely physical and mechanical prop- 

 erties. And, taught as we have been 

 to regard these definitions as complete, 



we naturally and rightly reject the 

 monstrous notion that out of such mat- 

 ter any form of life could possibly 

 arise. But are the definitions complete ? 

 Every thing depends on the answer to 

 be given to this question. Trace the 

 line of life backward, and see it ap- 

 proaching more and more to what we 

 call the purely physical condition. We 

 reach at length those organisms which 

 I have compared to drops of oil sus- 

 pended in a mixture of alcohol-and- 

 water. We reach the protogenes of 

 Haeckel, in which we have 'a type 

 distinguishable from a fragment of al- 

 bumen only by its finely-granular char- 

 acter.' Can we pause here ? We break 

 a magnet, and find two poles in each of 

 its fragments. We continue the pro- 

 cess of breaking, but, however small 

 the parts, each carries with it, though 

 enfeebled, the polarity of the whole. 

 And, when we can break no longer, we 

 prolong the intellectual vision to the 

 polar molecules. Are we not urged to 

 do something similar in the case of life? 

 Is there not a temptation to close to 

 some extent with Lucretius, when he 

 affirms that ' Nature is seen to do all 

 things spontaneously of herself, with- 

 out the meddling of the gods ? ' or 

 with Bruno, when he declares that Mat- 

 ter is not 'that mere empty capacity 

 which philosophers have pictured her 

 to be, but the universal mother who 

 brings forth all things as the fruit of 

 her own womb ? ' The questions here 

 raised are inevitable. They are ap- 

 proaching us with accelerated speed, 

 and it is not a matter of indifference 

 whether they are introduced with rev- 

 erence or irreverence. Abandoning all 

 disguise, the confession that I feel bound 

 to make before you is, that I prolong 

 the vision backward across the boun- 

 dary of the experimental evidence, and 

 discern, in that matter which we in our 



