MAN AND SCIENCE: A REPLY. 



65 



facts are neither more nor less mechanical life 

 phenomena than the growth and flowering of 

 plants ; than the propagation and sensory faculties 

 of animals, or the perceptions and intelligence of 

 man." l 



This is a most attractive programme, and one full 

 of interest and promise ; unfortunately, nothing 

 is effected here or elsewhere toward completing 

 the " explanation." It is asserted again and 

 again that life is but mechanical force, and that 

 soul and spirit and thought are but higher mani- 

 festations of the same ; but no attempt, even the 

 feeblest, is ever made to justify the wild assump- 

 tion, or to show how mechanical force can be 

 conceived as representing or producing either life 

 or thought. 2 



Advancing to the higher functions of life and 

 mind, we find it all but universally recognized 

 that the connection of these with physics and 

 physical processes is " unthinkable," and that 

 there is a vast chasm between the two classes 

 of phenomena which must ever remain intellect- 

 ually impassable. In the Fortnightly Review for 

 November, 1875, Prof. Tyndall quotes and adopts 

 the words of Pu Pois-Reymond to the effect that 

 " it is absolutely and forever inconceivable that a 

 number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen 

 atoms shoidd be otherwise than indifferent as to 

 their own position and motion, past, present, or 

 future," and adds that " the continuity between 

 molecular processes and the phenomena of con- 

 sciousness ... is a rock on which materialism 

 must inevitably split, whenever it pretends to be 

 a complete philosophy of the human mind." 



Havmg arrived at so formal a recognition as 

 this, that certain phenomena cannot rationally be 

 attached to material agencies, we might naturally 

 expect, on the scientific method, to be told that 

 there is something else that is not matter, and to 

 hear the inquiry " What is it?" perhaps to be 

 followed by an introduction to a world of mind. 

 Put the method hitherto followed is here quite 

 discarded, and we are told that it is all matter, 

 " there is nothing else ; for I discern in matter 

 the promise and potency of all terrestrial life" 3 — 

 to say the least, a very remarkable corollary to 

 what has gone before. 



Put leaving the question of method, I come 

 now to the more important inquiry as to the ac- 

 curacy of the facts of the science in the name of 

 which such serious demands are made upon our 



1 "Naturliche SchOpfungsgeschichte,*' by Dr. Ernst 

 Haeckel, sixth edition, p. 21. 



2 "Winds of Doctrine," p. 105. 



3 The "Belfast Address." 



77 



belief. If it be true that man is an automaton, 

 and therefore irresponsible, the position must be 

 capable of scientific demonstration ; and this 

 demonstration must be founded upon a solidarity 

 obtaining between the phenomena of force acting 

 in the inorganic world and those developed in or 

 by organic tissue or muscle. This line of argu- 

 ment has been adopted by Prof. Tyndall in his 

 now famous Pirnfmgham address, the general 

 character of which cannot be better described 

 than by quoting the leading article of the Times 

 of October 2d : 



" Everything is made clear as the lecturer pro- 

 ceeds; everything is illustrated in the concrete. 

 The general balance of the forces of Nature, the 

 laws of heat and motion, the methods by which 

 impressions are conveyed to the supreme centre 

 and orders sent off corresponding to them, are all 

 set forth with a fullness and lucidity which seem 

 to leave nothing to be desired. Then suddenly, 

 and without a word of warning, our guide turns 

 upon us. All the early words which we have been 

 innocently drinking in are intended, we are duly 

 shown, to bring us face to face with the problem 

 of free-will and necessity. "Which side we are to 

 take is already settled for us by our previous acqui- 

 escence. It is of no use for us to attempt to turn 

 back. Prof. Tyndall has got a tight grasp upon 

 us, and will not let us go on any terms. We have 

 become necessitarians whether we will or no, and 

 it only remains for our teacher to prove to us that 

 the belief into which he has seduced us is, after 

 all, not such a very dreadful one." 



Prof. Tyndall commences, in his own inimi- 

 table style, with a lucid sketch of the "interde- 

 pendence and harmonious interaction " of forces 

 in general. He dwells especially upon the prin- 

 ciple of " payment for results," showing in a 

 variety of aspects that whatever energy is mani- 

 fested in any form has to be paid for by some 

 consumption, some corresponding change, or some 

 disappearance of another form of energy. There 

 is no work without consumption of fuel ; and the 

 sum of the results is constant. If the fuel is 

 consumed without any external work being per- 

 formed, there is a perfectly definite quantity of 

 heat produced, whether it be in the form of rapid 

 combustion, as of coal in the steam-engine, or in 

 the form of slow combustion, as that of zinc in 

 the galvanic battery. If, on the other hand, exter- 

 nal work is performed, still the quantity (H-)-W) 

 is constant ; H representing the heat produced 

 within the machine or battery, and W the exter- 

 nal work, whether in the form of heat or mechani- 

 cal performance. This, being ( a most essential 

 part of the argument, is dwelt upon at great 



