ADDRESS 
OF 
JOHN TYNDALL, F.RBS., 
D.C.L. OXON., LL.D. CANTAB., F.C.P.S., 
PROFESSOR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE ROYAL INSTITUTION, 
PRESIDENT. 
An impulse inherent in primeval man turned his thoughts and questionings 
betimes towards the sources of natural phenomena. The same impulse, in- 
herited and intensified, is the spur of scientific action to-day. Determined 
by it, by a process of abstraction from experience we form physical theories 
which lie beyond the pale of experience, but which satisfy the desire of the 
mind to see every natural occurrence resting upon a cause. In forming their 
notions of the origin of things, our earliest historic (and doubtless, we might 
add, our prehistoric) ancestors pursued, as far as their intelligence permitted, 
the same course. They also fell back upon experience, but with this differ- 
ence—that the particular experiences which furnished the weft and woof of 
their theories were drawn, not from the study of nature, but from what lay 
much closer to them, the observation of men. Their theories accordingly took 
an anthropomorphic form. To supersensual beings, which, ‘‘ however potent 
and invisible, were nothing but a species of human creatures, perhaps raised 
from among mankind, and retaining all human passions and appetites”*, 
were handed over the rule and governance of natural phenomena. 
Tested by observation and reflection, these early notions failed in the long 
run to satisfy the more penetrating intellects of our race. Far in the depths 
of history we find men of exceptional power differentiating themselves from 
the crowd, rejecting these anthropomorphic notions, and seeking to connect 
natural phenomena with their physical principles. But long prior to these 
purer efforts of the understanding the merchant had been abroad, and ren- 
dered the philosopher possible; commerce had been developed, wealth 
amassed, leisure for travel and speculation secured, while races educated 
under different conditions, and therefore differently informed and endowed, 
had been stimulated and sharpened by mutual contact. In those regions 
where the commercial aristocracy of ancient Greece mingled with its eastern 
neighbours, the sciences were born, being nurtured and developed by free- 
thinking and courageous men. ‘The state of things to be displaced may be 
gathered from a passage of Euripides quoted by Hume. “ There is nothing 
* Hume, ‘Natural History of Religion.’ 
