82 Scientific Sophisms. 



But this method of evolving science from 

 supposition, and conjuring with conjecture for 

 certainty, is by no means a monopoly of Mr. 

 Herbert Spencer. In one sentence of his Essay 

 on " Scientific Materialism," Professor Tyndall 

 states that " we should on philosophic grounds 

 expect to find" certain physical conditions; and 

 in the next, he commences an induction, from this 

 mere expectation, with the phrase, " The relation 

 of physics to consciousness being thus invari- 

 able " ! 1 a relation which, if it exists at all, does 

 certainly not exist in any demonstrable form 

 so far is it from " being thus," or being in any 

 way other than that of " expectation " merely, 

 " invariable." 



Similarly, when, in his controversy with Mr. 

 Martineau, he claims "consciousness" for the 

 fern and the oak, he says, " No man can say 

 that the feelings of the animal are not repre- 

 sented by a drowsier consciousness in the 

 vegetable world. At all events no line has 

 ever been drawn between the conscious and the 

 unconscious ; for the vegetable shades into the 

 animal by such fine gradations, that it is 

 impossible to say where the one ends and the 

 other begins. . . . The evidences as to 



1 " Fragments of Sc ; ence." Sixth Edition, Longmans, 

 1879, vol. ii. p. 86. 



