EDITOR'S TABLE. 



367 



ity of the thing indicated. He knows 

 that the policy of restriction imposed by 

 the State upon the freedom of commer- 

 cial intercliange, by which monopolists 

 are enriched, the people plundered, the 

 Government corrupted, and the country 

 disgraced, is intrenched in popular mis- 

 conception, because it has got itself la- 

 beled "protection." The case before 

 us is equally in point. So long as the 

 term " social science " is employed to 

 characterize the heterogeneous and dis- 

 cordant opinions of unscientific men 

 upon the most intricate and refractory 

 problems of civilized life, it will be dis- 

 credited in its true application. 



The American Social Science Asso- 

 ciation has been running for ten years, 

 and its British prototype has had a con- 

 spicuous .career for twice that time, but 

 so little have they done toward the real 

 promotion of the subject, so little to 

 prepare the public for it, and so much 

 to disseminate erroneous views respect- 

 ing it, that the most comprehensive and 

 solid contribution yet made to sociologi- 

 cal science a work entirely free from 

 speculation, and which aims to lay the 

 foundation of the science by collating 

 and arranging the elemental facts de- 

 scriptive of all types of social structure 

 cannot get patronage enough even to 

 pay for carrying on the publication ; and 

 the real difficulty is the false impres- 

 sions of the subject that have been fos- 

 tered and disseminated by those who 

 have acquired weight with the publie 

 as its promoters. 



CORRECTED AGAIN. 



The ex-President of Harvard Col- 

 lege, writing in the Unitarian Revieic, 

 revives the perversion of Prof. Tyn- 

 dall's views on the prayer question in 

 the following pointed words : "Let the 

 President of the British Association re- 

 frain from insulting Protestant Chris- 

 tians by proposing an arithmetical test 

 of the reality of the communion of the 

 soul with God." We are curious to 



know where Dr. Hill got his evidence 

 for the charge that Prof. Tyndall has 

 ever proposed " an arithmetical test of 

 the reality of the communion of the 

 soul with God," or any evidence that 

 he has ever questioned that reality. 

 To the conception of prayer as inspira- 

 tion, communion with the Divine Spirit, 

 or the expression of devotional feeling, 

 we are not aware that Prof. Tyndall 

 has ever made the slightest objection. 

 On the contrary, we know, by his own 

 repeated avowals, that he recognizes 

 the religious efficacy of prayer as a 

 " strengthener of the heart," which 

 " in its purer forms hints at disciplines 

 which few of us can neglect without 

 moral loss." Again, he observes: "It 

 is not my habit to think otherwise than 

 solemnly of the feeling that prompts 

 prayer." This, surely, is very far from 

 being the language either of denial or 

 of insult. 



As to the so-called prayer-test, it 

 was not to try " the reality of the com- 

 munion of the soul with God " that 

 Sir Henry Thompson proposed it, and 

 Prof. Tyndall indorsed it by sending the 

 anonymous article to the Contemporary 

 Review. The object was, indeed, very 

 diff'erent from this. It was to deter- 

 mine the validity of what may be called 

 the physical theory of prayer ; to ascer- 

 tain the value of petitions to God for 

 intervention in producing designated 

 physical effects, such as changing the 

 weather, augmenting the crops, or stay- 

 ing disease in special answer to such 

 petitions. It was to the conception of 

 prayer as critical and advisory, as ob- 

 jecting to this and calling for tliat, as 

 invoking a potency that is available 

 to man for the attainment of specific 

 ends in the natural world, such as can 

 be only in this way secured, that it 

 was proposed to apply some rational 

 method of verification. 



The effects claimed being physical, 

 it is the legitimate work of science to 

 search out and measure every agency 

 by which they are influenced. Nor 



