CHAP. XIII.] CONSEQUENCES. 387 



Let us follow matter to its utmost bounds ; let us claim it in all its 

 forms to experiment with and to speculate upon. Casting the term 

 vital force from our vocabulary, let us reduce, if we can, the visible 

 phenomena of life to mechanical attractions and repulsions. Having 

 thus exhausted physics, and reached its very rim, the real mystery 

 still looms beyond us. We have, in fact, made no step towards its 

 solution. And thus it will ever loom even beyond the bourne of 

 knowledge compelling the philosophies of successive ages to confess 

 that 



&quot; We are such stuff 



As dreams are made of, and our little life 



Is rounded with a sleep. &quot; 



Finally, the Professor says of the theory of evolution: 



&quot; Many who hold it would probably assent to the position that at the 

 present moment all our philosophy, all our poetry, all our science, and 

 all our art Plato, Shakspeare, Newton, and Eaphael are potential in 

 the fires of the Sun. We long to learn something of our origin. If 

 the Evolution hypothesis be correct, even this unsatisfied yearning 

 must have come to us across the ages which separate the unconscious 

 primeval mist from the consciousness. of to-day.&quot; Ibid. p. 163. 



No one can have more esteem for Professor Tyndall when 

 teaching us concerning those coexistences and sequences of 

 phenomena which his genius, energy, and perseverance have 

 detected, than has the present writer. But Professor Tyn 

 dall, as a metaphysician, must be understood to court cri 

 ticism by the authoritative and didactic tone which he has 

 adopted in a field of battle he has gone out of his own 

 special line to seek. It may then well be asked, what is 

 the creed, what are the lessons likely to be learned by youno- 

 or inquiring minds from this scientific catechism? What 

 will be gathered from such passages as those referred to 

 (which are not elsewhere retracted or explained away by 

 their author), from that which they inevitably imply, as well 

 as from that which they actually express? For while re 

 ligious belief retains its social power in any country, those 

 who attack it will generally, more or less, veil their hostility, 

 and seek by implication, insinuation, or studied silence, to 

 produce an effect far exceeding that openly aimed at by their 

 express words. As far as I understand Professor Tyndall, 



2 c 2 



