BRAIN B UIL T BY SUN. 5 3 



oaks, and men, and grasshoppers. Nobody besides himself 

 can have seen it. He alone, probably, has satisfied himself 

 that the machinery of a watermill bears somewhat the same 

 relation to that of the little Swiss bird as the atomic 

 machinery of a cabbage bears to that of a man. 



Dr. Tyndall teaches people that the sun "forms" muscle 

 and "builds" the brain, and yet omits to tell them that 

 such very rough and simple pieces of mechanism, compara- 

 tively speaking, as watermills, and windmills, and clocks 

 and watches, are really formed and built by the sun. This 

 omission requires explanation upon his part, for it must be 

 obvious even to a child that if the sun can form a muscle 

 and build a brain, it ought to be able to perform such com- 

 paratively simple operations as raising a wall, or building a 

 house, or making a wheel. Still Dr. Tyndall does not say 

 that walls, and houses, and clocks, are the workmanship of 

 the sun, though he has nevertheless affirmed, without 

 explaining what he means by the phrase, that lilies and 

 verdure, and cattle are the sun's workmanship I 



No one knows better than the physicist how very inexact 

 and imperfect our knowledge even of the physical pheno- 

 mena of living beings really is, and how very much yet 

 remains to be discovered before we can explain that appa- 

 rently very simple phenomenon muscular contraction. 

 One would have concluded, therefore, that, of all scientific 

 investigators, physicists would have been cautious in draw- 

 ing inferences respecting the nature of the more abstruse 

 and complex phenomena of living beings. No one knows 

 better than the physicist that the energy of muscular con- 

 traction very far exceeds that which can be obtained from 

 any known arrangement containing the same weight of 



