236 Force, Energy, and Will 



of force ' or ' transformation of energy ' as irrational and pro- 

 foundly misleading. I do not, of course, deny their existence 

 as abstractions from really existing sensible concretes (which 

 concretes exert real activities), as the notions ' society ' and 'the 

 state ' are abstracts from really existing men. But just as a 

 misuse of these latter terms (especially the state) seems to 

 me often to tend to grave political evils, and to the sacrifice 

 of concrete individuals (real men and women) for the sake of 

 a mere abstraction, so a misuse of the abstract terms force 

 and energy seems to me to tend to serious intellectual evils. 



These evils have just been made remarkably plain by 

 the Presidential address recently delivered by Professor 

 Tyndall at Birmingham, republished under the title Science 

 ctnd Man} Therein the author teaches the doctrine of 

 the persistence and transformation of energy, and makes 

 such teaching the occasion and basis for an eloquent attack 

 on the freedom of the will. Thus to the denial of the 

 essential distinctness of the different kinds of bodily activity, 

 which we know as the different physical forces, follows natur- 

 ally the denial of the essential distinctness of those activities 

 termed vital, and to the denial of these latter succeeds the 

 denial of the essential distinctness of the activities we know as 

 mental. The whole system of denial, however, seems to repose 

 upon a hasty, almost gratuitous, assumption that from the 

 quantitative equivalence found to exist between forces their 

 essential unity necessarily follows. 



It may be worth while to consider a little the last cul- 

 minating expression of a system reposing upon such a basis ; 

 noticing by the way some defects of apprehension and of 

 reasoning which, I venture to think, should make the un- 

 prejudiced reader pause before attaching weight to the 

 Professor's opinions on matters foreign to that physical 

 science in which we all admiringly recognise his just claims 



^ See Fortnightly Review for November 1877, p. 593. 



