5 i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" may I join the choir invisible, 

 Of those immortal dead who live again 

 In minds made better by their presence : live 

 In pulses stirred to generosity. 

 In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 

 For miserable aims that end with self; 

 In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 

 And, with their mild persistence, urge men's search 

 To vaster issues. So to live is heaven.''' 



* 



In this year, too, at Belfast, Professor Tyndall delivered, before 

 the British Association, his celebrated address, in which, " abandoning 

 all disguise," he says that " the confession that I feel bound to make 

 before you is, that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary 

 of the experimental evidence, and discern, in that matter which we, in 

 our ignorance and notwithstanding our professed revei'ence for its 

 Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and po- 

 tency of every form and quality of life."* The discovery, if it may 

 be called so, was not exactly a new one. The same avowal had been 

 made, more than twenty years before, by W. B. Carpenter, but the 

 rise of the evolution school in the interim caused an importance to 

 attach to Professor Tyndall's utterances that has not attended upon 

 Dr. Carpenter's. f The address at once took rank as the high-water 

 mark of materialism. Lastly, in the same year, we come to Greg's 

 " "Warnings of Cassandra," and to a work which, together with this, is 

 symptomatic of the feelings of the next f ew years Hartmann's " Phi- 

 losophy of the Unknowable." \ 



The prevailing tone, after the battle had been fought, was one of 

 despair and pessimism. Science had won the victory, but thoughtful 

 minds, even on that side, saw that it might be possible to push it too 

 far. Hence came attempts at compromise, the cry for which went up, 

 in 1874, from John Morley, the editor of the " Fortnightly Review," 

 the chief Positivist organ. Still, for the present, the general tone was 

 disheartening in the extreme, and its influence is traceable in many 

 ways. Poetry has been distinctly deteriorated by it. In politics it 

 led to a temporary reaction in favor of conservatism. Life appeared 

 to be, as Pope had said, a mighty maze, but the plan was lost. In- 

 stead of the authoritative tone of the Church, the voices of different 



* Quoted from the original, as reprinted iu "Nature." The passage is reworded in 

 the published address. The variations between the two arc curious, and well worthy of 

 study. 



f For Dr. Carpenter's words, see his article upon " Life," in Todd's " Cyclopaedia of 

 Anatomy and Physiology," vol. iii, p. 150. This work appeared in 1847. He refers, in 

 a foot-note, to an earlier essay, on the laws regulating vital and physical phenomena, in 

 the " Edinburgh Philosophical Journal," April, 1838. 



% I may here remark that I have confined my review to works in the English lan- 

 guage. Many foreign names, such as Strauss and Haeckel, will occur to every one. To 

 have extended my review to these would have required a separate essay. 



