60 THE ORIGIN OP CKEATION. 



have to be conducted on much the same principles, and for 

 somewhat similar reasons, that Euskin waged war against the 

 great Eenaissance revival in painting and architecture; by 

 appealing to nature as a paramount authority in everything, 

 over the opinions or doctrines of any man, or class of men, 

 however eminent or distinguished. 



A number of persons again may read the same sentence of a 

 foreign language, yet scarcely any two will translate it similarly : 

 and, as a person who is ignorant of the language could only guess 

 the meaning of the sentence, so one who is ignorant of the com- 

 posite law of nature and its working, can only stumble at the 

 processes of any of its phenomena. It may seem a startling 

 thing to say, but we assert that neither Professor Tyndall, 

 nor any other man, can read nature, or experiments in nature 

 or in the laboratory aright, until they understand magnetism 

 and atomic action. 



For instance, he says : " A leaden bullet in hitting a target 

 is much hotter than an iron one, for iron has a greater capacity 

 for absorbing heat than lead." This is manifestly incorrect, for 

 such heat is entirely induced or caused by friction. The ball of 

 lead in hitting the target is crushed out of shape ; the intense 

 friction of the particles consequent on this circumstance, must 

 produce great heat. The harder iron, on the other hand, by not 

 yielding, has little or no . friction, and of course very little heat. 



Again, from this illustration, they argue that if a solid body 

 be stopped, a certain amount of heat would be generated, accord- 

 ing to the rate at which it was going. But it is obvious that if 

 the same leaden bullet had been stopped in sand, so as to 

 preserve its shape, it would have generated no more heat than 

 the iron one. 



