RECEPTION OF "THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE" 239 



be ultimately said of it. We must be at first a Lucretian Atom not a vortex ring, 

 strong in solid singleness, not wriggling meanly away from the knife ! Will you 

 therefore, by little instalments, as it suits you, give me soon all the more vital 

 improvements which occur to you as possible without much altering the pages, etc. 

 (the type having been kept up, so as to save expense) ? 



You have of course seen Clifford's painful essay in the Fortnightly 



An advanced ritualist, MacColl, has cracked us up in a letter to the Guardian last 

 week. This week the other ritualist paper The Church Herald says our book is infidel. 

 Last week the Spiritualist said that with a few slight changes the book would be an 

 excellent text-book for its clients. The Edinburgh Daily Review says we are subtle 

 and dangerous materialists. Hanna (late of Free St John's here) says the work is the 

 most important defence of religion that has appeared for a long time ! Which of these 

 is nearest the truth ? 



The Church Herald is down on us for your suggestion about "for a little while 

 lower than the angels." 



Truly the reviews and critiques of The Unseen Universe were as varied as 

 the religious and irreligious views of the critics who wrote them. To one it 

 was a " masterly treatise," to another it was full of " the most hardened and 

 impenitent nonsense that ever called itself original speculation." Some sneered at 

 the authors for their ignorance of philosophical thought and phraseology ; others 

 were captivated by the "acute analytical faculty," the "broad logical candid 

 turn of mind " displayed. Many of the early appreciations of the book were 

 certainly crude, hastily conceived, and hurriedly presented before their readers. 

 On various sides the intention of the argument was not clearly apprehended. 

 There was a novelty in the mode of presenting it, with an appeal to the 

 profoundest truths of modern physics, which rather confused the mind of the 

 ordinary critic unskilled in Carnot cycles and reversible engines. One critic 

 there was, the versatile and brilliant Clifford, who knowing these truths in all 

 their purely physical significance, gave the authors a terrible trouncing in the 

 Fortnightly Review (June i, 1877). The critique is reprinted in his Lectures 

 and Essays, but with some of the liveliest passages deleted. The most 

 important omission is the opening paragraph, which in its original form 

 presented Clifford in the guise of a clever debater, who burlesques the 

 argument he intends to demolish. The final paragraph sufficiently shows 

 Clifford's point of view and is of interest here from its incidental description 

 of Tait as a "wide-eyed hero," between whom and Clifford there existed 

 indeed a warm affection, divergent though their views were on questions 

 of religion. Scoffing at the attempt to preserve the Christian faith in an 

 enlightened scientific age, Clifford wrote : 



