76 Science, her Claims, Position, and Duties. (January, 
Their spirit and their point of view are equally faulty. To 
accuse a man of ‘“‘ having permitted the cheers of his 
audience to stimulate him to the utterance of words which 
no right-minded man could employ,” when all the time he 
was delivering a speech previously drawn up and actually 
printed; to say, with Dean Cowie, that the Professor ended: 
his speech “ by terming himself a material atheist ;’ to 
speak of Professors Tyndall and Huxley as “ignoring the 
existence of God, and advocating pure and simple mate- 
rialism ;” or to represent our author as “‘ patting religion on 
the back,’—is a style of criticism not recognised among 
gentlemen, and requiring more malice than subtlety, pro- 
fundity, or learning. 
Professor Tyndall, in some parts of his speech, had appa- 
rently forgotten that it is the duty of the British Association 
to confine itself to facts, and to inductions carefully drawn 
and rigidly verified, or at least capable of verification,—that 
Science deals not with noumena but with phenomena, and 
that the ground on which Lucretius and Bishop Butler wage 
their endless and fruitless warfare lies beyond her juris- 
diction. Consciousness and sensibility are for us ultimate 
facts, about which we may speculate,—and quarrel, if 
foolish enough,—but which we can never explain. Instead, 
however, of pointing out where the orator had ceased to be 
scientific, they, with sublime inconsistency, denounced 
Science with an eagerness as if the matter had been pre- 
pared long beforehand, and merely an occasion had been 
sought for its delivery. The ostensible casus belli was the 
Belfast speech ; the real quarrel seems to be with the scien- 
tific spirit in its legitimate manifestations, and with its 
growing influence in the world. Of this Dr. Magee’s late 
sermon on the ‘‘ Gospel of Science ”’ is a striking example. 
There are minds who seek in everything what—for want of 
a better name—we term unvarying law, and to whom the 
arbitrary is essentially painful. There are other minds who 
have ano less decided craving for will and for personality. 
To this latter class some of Dr. Tyndall’s critics seem to 
belong by virtue of race.* But has this class any right to 
forbid the former from even stating its views ? 
To follow the ‘‘ Address’’ from proposition to proposition, 
* It is a curious fact, not hitherto recognised, that all or nearly all Professor 
Tyndall’s denouncers appear to belong to the Celtic race, as far at least as we 
may judge from their names. The Abbé Moigno declares himself a Breton, 
consequently a Celt of the Celts. Such names as Cullen, Magee, Fraser, 
Cowie, and Blackie speak for themselves. We believe that this rule will be 
found to hold good in other cases where men of science or scientific researches 
are attacked from the same point of view. 
