104 Scientific Sophisms. 



which in the passage above cited, it was found 

 necessary to hypothecate. " Alter the capa- 

 city " of the observer, it was then said, " and 

 the evidence would alter too." l Yet here, 

 only six pages earlier, in the very same paper, 

 we are told : " Were our minds and senses so 

 expanded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to 

 enable us to see and feel the very molecules of 

 the brain ; were we capable of following all 

 their motions, all their groupings, all their 

 electric discharges, if such there be ; and were 

 we intimately acquainted with the correspond- 

 ing states of thought and feeling, we should 

 be as tar as ever from the solution ot the 

 problem, 'How are these physical processes 

 connected with the facts of consciousness ? ' 

 The chasm between the two classes of pheno- 

 mena would still remain intellectually im- 

 passable." * 



Yet notwithstanding all this Dr Tyndall 

 formally proclaims his " belief " " in the contin- 

 uity of Nature." The " continuity " of an " im- 

 passable chasm " ! A chasm " intellectually im- 

 passable " ; and yet " by an intellectual neces- 

 sity " he crosses it " Two classes of pheno- 

 mena," and no .possible means of transition 



1 " Materialism and its Opponents," p. 595. 

 * Ibid., p. 589. 



