THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



DECEMBER, 1875. 

 MAEXmEAU AND MATERIALISM.' 



By JOHN TYNDALL, F. E.S., LL.D. 



PRESENTED in the order of their publication, these Fragments 

 will, I think, make it plain that, within the last two years, I have 

 added no material iniquity to the list previously recorded against me. 

 I have gone carefully over them all this year in Switzerland, bestow- 

 ing special attention upon the one which has given most offense. To 

 the judgment of thoughtful men I now commit them : the unthought- 

 ful and the unfair will not read them, though they will continue to 

 abuse them. 



I have no desire to repay in kind the hard words already thrown 

 at them and me ; but a simple comparison will make clear to my 

 more noisy and unreasonable assailants how I regai'd their position. 

 To the nobler Bereans of the press and pulpit, who have honored me 

 with their attention, I do not now refer. Webster defines a squatter 

 as one who settles on new land without a title. This, in regard to 

 anthropology and cosmogony, I hold to have been the position of the 

 older theologians ; and what their heated successors of to-day de- 

 nounce as " a raid upon theology," is, in my opinion, a perfectly legal 

 and equitable attempt to remove them from ground which they have 

 no right to hold. 



If the title exist, let it be produced. It is not the revision of the 

 text of Genesis by accomplished scholars that the public so much 

 need, as to be informed and convinced how far the text, polished or 

 unpolished, has a claim upon the belief of intelligent persons. It is, 

 I fear, a growing conviction that our ministers of religion, for the 

 sake of peace, more or less sacrifice their sincerity in dealing with the 

 cosmogony of the Old Testament. I notice this in conversation, and 

 it is also appearing in print. Before me, for example, is a little bro- 

 chure, in which a layman presses a clerical friend with a series of 



' Preface to the forthcoming edition of " Fragments of Science." 



VOL. VIII, 9 



