218 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



my censor exclaims, "This is a most remarkable passage. 

 Much as we dislike seasoning polemics with strong words, 

 we assert that this Apology only tends to affix with links 

 of steel to the name of Professor Tyndall the dread impu- 

 tation against which he struggles." 



Here we have a very fair example of subjective relig- 

 ious vigor. But my quarrel with such exhibitions is that 

 they do not always represent objective fact. No atheistic 

 reasoning can, I hold, dislodge religion from the human 

 heart. Logic cannot deprive us of life, and religion is life 

 to the religious. As an experience of consciousness it is 

 beyond the assaults of logic. But the religious life is 

 often projected in external forms I use the word in its 

 widest sense and this embodiment of the religious senti- 

 ment will have to bear more and more, as the world be- 

 comes more enlightened, the stress of scientific tests. We 

 must be careful of projecting into external nature that 

 which belongs to ourselves. My critic commits this mis- 

 take: he feels, and takes delight in feeling, that I am 

 struggling, and he obviously experiences the most ex- 

 quisite pleasures of "the muscular sense" in holding me 

 down. His feelings are as real as if his imagination of 

 what mine are were equally real. His picture of my 

 "struggles" is, however, a mere delusion. I do not 

 struggle. I do not fear the charge of Atheism; nor 

 should I even disavow it, in reference to any definition 

 of the Supreme which he, or his order, would be likely 

 to frame. His "links" and his "steel" and his "dread 

 imputations" are, therefore, even more unsubstantial than 

 my "streaks of morning cloud," and they may be per- 

 mitted to vanish together. 



