PSEUDO-PHILOSOPHY log 



or even of a dead body coming back to life again of any 

 of Nature's millions of plants and animals. 



Finally, he says : " Not with the vagueness belonging 

 to the emotions but with the definiteness belonging to the 

 understanding, the scientific man has to put to himself 

 these questions regarding the introduction of life upon the 

 earth. . . . As far as the eye of science has hitherto 

 ranged through Nature, no intrusion of purely creative 

 power into any series of phenomena has been observed." ^ 

 What did Tyndall understand by a " purely creative 

 power " ? Presumably, the " God of Design " ; but if the 

 making of one species out of another may be called 

 " creative," we find that protoplasm with its nucleus is 

 perfectly well able to do it. 



If Tyndall meant some direct interference of an ex- 

 ternal, conscious Creator, working upon matter and force 

 from without physical nature ; then we have no direct 

 evidence of any such interference throughout the whole 

 period of the world's history ; since Evolution first began 

 to work out the life histories of plants and animals, includ- 

 ing man, from tJie first appearance of protoplasm on this 

 earth. 



But when we turn from useless speculations of the 

 imagination, however scientific they may be thought to 

 be, to positive facts capable of investigation, we at once 

 come upon a phenomenon which is 7iot discoverable in the 

 inorganic world, namely, that Directivity within proto- 

 plasm, to which I have abundantly alluded. 



This Directivity is only associated with Life ; ^ and 

 these two things have been in close operation through 

 all organisation. Both, like physical forces, are only 



1 Apology for the Belfast Address, p. 547. 



^ I do not here include the arrangements of molecules to form crystals 

 in the mineral kingdom under the term ; though Croll would do so. 



