Force ^ Energy^ and Will 243 



Bishop Milner's execration respecting the iniquity of St. 

 Bartholomew : — 



'• Excidat ilia dies sevo, nee postera credant 

 Saecula.' 



On the other hand, were I myself an atheist, I could not 

 deny the possible advisability of a vigorous persecution of 

 atheism. Did I also hold man to be but an improved ape, I 

 might reasonably maintain the need of a rigorous repression 

 of all practices I disliked, for we should then have no rational 

 ground for confidence that the world was so formed that 

 truth, justice, and virtue must in the end prevail over their 

 various and most discordant enemies. 



The system Professor Tyndall advocates he has advocated 

 on the principle of the persistence and transformation of 

 energy, and the ultimate conception presented is that of 

 motion (molar or molecular), as the objective reality under- 

 lying those subjective delusions — Human Virtue and Divine 

 Wisdom. But in the first place it is most inconsistent in 

 those who deny to man's soul the power of directly perceiv- 

 ing objectivity, to speak of purely physical changes at all, 

 or of molecular motions as the accompaniments of feeHng 

 with which they may be contrasted. Try and conceive such 

 motions as we may, they ever remain (according to their philo- 

 sophy) but forms of subjectivity — a 'wave motion' can be 

 nothing else than a plexus of sensations past and present. 

 But, putting aside this objection, it may be asked with re- 

 spect to the attempt to conceive and represent all activities 

 in terms of motion — is not the notion that by thus repre- 

 senting them we get deeper into their real nature than 

 otherwise we should do but a delusion resulting from the 

 facts that motions are our commonest sensible experiences ? 



It is not that reason tells us that 'motion' is the one 

 ultimate universal and fundamental power or activity, any 



