TYNDALVS REPLY TO HIS CRITICS. 437 



anxieties which good health would dissipate. We fear and scorn 

 " materialism." But he who knew all about it, and could apply his 

 knowledge, might become the preacher of a new gospel. Not, how- 

 ever, through the ecstatic moments of the individual does such knowl- 

 edge come, but through the revelations of science, in connection with 

 the history of mankind. 



Why should the Roman Catholic Church call gluttony a mortal 

 sin ? Why should prayer and fasting occupy a place in the disciplines 

 of a religion? What is the meaning of Luther's advice to the young 

 clergyman who came to him, perplexed with the difficulty of predesti- 

 nation and election, if it be not that, in virtue of its action upon the 

 brain, when wisely applied, there is moral and religious virtue even in 

 a hydro-carbon ? To use the old language, food and drink are creat- 

 ures of God, and have therefore a spiritual value. The air of the Alps 

 would be augmented tenfold in purifying power if this truth were rec- 

 ognized. Through our neglect of the monitions of a reasonable ma- 

 terialism we sin and suffer daily. I might here point to the train of 

 deadly disorders over which science has given modern society such 

 control disclosing the lair of the material enemy, insuring his destruc- 

 tion, and thus preventing that moral squalor and hopelessness which 

 habitually tread on the heels of epidemics in the case of the poor. 



Rising to higher spheres, the visions of Swedenborg, and the ecstasy 

 of Plotinus and Porphyry, are phases of that psychical condition, obvi- 

 ously connected with the nervous system and state of health, on which 

 is based the Vedic doctrine of the absorption of the individual into the 

 universal soul. Plotinus taught the devout how to pass into a condi- 

 tion of ecstasy. Porphyry complains of having been only once united 

 to God in eighty-six years, while his master Plotinus had been so united 

 six times in sixty years. 1 A friend who knew Wordsworth informs 

 me that the poet, in some of his moods, was accustomed to seize hold 

 of an external object to assure himself of his own bodily existence. 

 The " entranced mind" of Mr. Page-Roberts, referred to so admiringly 

 by the Spectator, is a similiar phenomenon. No one, I should say, has 

 had a wider experience in this field than Mi*. Emerson. As states of 

 consciousness those phenomena have an undisputed reality, and a 

 substantial identity. They are, however, connected with the most 

 heterogeneous objective conceptions. Porphyry wrote against Christi- 

 anity; Mr. Page-Roberts is a devout Christian. But notwithstanding 

 the utter discordance of these objective conceptions, their subjective 

 experiences are similar, because of the similarity of their finely-strung 

 nervous organizations. 



But, admitting the practical facts, and acting on them, there will 

 always remain ample room for speculation. Take the argument of the 

 Lucretian. As far as I am aware, not one of my assailants has at- 

 tempted to answer it. Some of them, indeed, rejoice over the ability 



1 See Dr. Draper's important work, " Conflict between Religion and Science." 



