TYNDALUS REPLY TO HIS CRITICS. 423 





 peals, menaces, and judgments covering not only the world that now 



is, but that which is to come it has interested me to note how triv- 

 ially men seem to be influenced by what they call their religion, and 

 how potently by that " nature" which it is the alleged province of re- 

 ligion to eradicate or subdue. From fair and manly argument, from 

 the tenderest and holiest sympathy on the part of those who desire 

 my eternal good, I pass by many gradations, through deliberate un- 

 fairness, to a spirit of bitterness which desires, with a fervor inex- 

 pressible in words, my eternal ill. Now, were religion the potent fac- 

 tor, we might expect a homogeneous utterance from those professing 

 a common creed ; while, if human nature be the really potent factor, 

 we may expect utterances as heterogeneous as the characters of men. 

 As a matter of fact we have the latter ; suggesting to my mind that 

 the common religion professed and defended by these different people 

 is merely the accidental conduit through which they pour their own 

 tempers, lofty or low, courteous or vulgar, mild or ferocious, holy or 

 unholy, as the case may be. Pure abuse, however, I have deliberately 

 avoided reading, wishing to keep, not only hatred, malice, and unchar- 

 itableness, but even every trace of irritation, far away from my side 

 of a discussion which demands not only good temper, but largeness, 

 clearness, and many-sidedness of mind, if it is to guide us even to pro- 

 visional solutions. 



At an early stage of the controversy a distinguished professor of 

 the University of Cambridge was understood to argue and his argu- 

 ment was caught up with amusing eagerness by a portion of the reli- 

 gious press that my ignorance of mathematics renders me incompe- 

 tent to speculate on the proximate origin of life. Had I thought his 

 argument relevant, my reply would have been simple ; for before me 

 lies a printed document, more than twenty-two years old, bearing the 

 signature of this same learned professor, in which he was good enough 

 to testify that I am " well versed in pure mathematics." 



In connection with his limitation of speculative capacity to the 

 mathematician, the gentleman just referred to offered what he consid- 

 ered a conclusive proof of the being of a God. This solemn problem 

 he knocked off in a single paragraph. It interests me profoundly to 

 reflect upon the difference between the state of mind which could rest 

 satisfied with this performance and that of the accomplished poet, and 

 more than accomplished critic, who in "Literature and Dogma" pro- 

 nounces the subject of the professor's demonstration " an unverifiable 

 hypothesis." Whence this difference ? Were the objective facts de- 

 cisive, both writers would come to the same conclusion : the divergence 

 is, therefore, to be referred to the respective subjective organs which 

 take the outward evidence in. When I turn, as I have done from 

 time to time for years, to the articles and correspondence in our theo- 

 logical journals, and try to gather from them what our religious teach- 

 ers think of this universe and of each other, they seem to me to be as 



