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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 405. 



which goes very far to explain the nervous 

 dogmatism of nescience. Just because he 

 had done tliis, because he had, as it were, 

 mapped out the boundaries between what 

 is knowable though not yet known and 

 what must remain forever unknowable to 

 man, he did not hesitate to place implicit 

 reliance on the progress of which man is 

 capable, through the exercise of patient and 

 persistent research. In Tyndall's scheme 

 of thought the chief dicta were the strict 

 division of the world of Imowledge from 

 that of emotion, and the lifting of life by 

 throAving overboard the malign residuum 

 of dogmatism, fanaticism and intolerance, 

 thereby stimulating and nourishing a plas- 

 tic vigor of intellect. His cry was 'Com- 

 motion before stagnation, the leap of the 

 torrent before the stillness of the swamp.' 

 His successors have no longer any need 

 to repeat those significant words, 'We 

 claim and we shall wrest from theology the 

 entire domain of eosmological theory.' 

 The claim has been practically, though 

 often unconsciously, conceded. Tyndall's 

 dictum, 'Every system must be plastic to 

 the extent that the growth of knowledge 

 demands, ' struck a note that was too often 

 absent from the heated discussions of days 

 that now seem so strangely remote. His 

 honorable admission that, after all that 

 had been achieved by the developmental 

 theory, 'the whole process of evolution is 

 the manifestation of a power absolutely in- 

 scrutable to the intellect of man,' shows 

 how willingly he acknowledged the neces- 

 sary limits of scientific inquiry. This res- 

 ervation did not prevent him from express- 

 ing the conviction forced upon him by the 

 pressure of intellectual necessity, after ex- 

 haustive consideration of the known rela- 

 tions of living things, that matter in itself 

 must be regarded as containing the promise 

 and potency of all terrestrial life. Bacon 

 in his day said very much the same thing : 

 ' He that will know the properties and pro- 



ceedings of matter should comprehend in 

 his understanding the sum of all things, 

 which have been, which are, and which 

 shall be, although no knowledge can extend 

 so far as to singular and individual beings. ' 

 Tyndall's conclusion was at the time 

 thought to be based on a too insecure pro- 

 jection into the unknown, and some even 

 regarded such an expansion of the crude 

 properties of matter as totally unwar- 

 ranted. Yet Tyndall was certainly no ma- 

 terialist in the ordinary acceptation of the 

 term. It is true his arguments, like all 

 arguments, were capable of being dis- 

 torted, especially when taken out of their 

 context, and the address became in this 

 way an easy prey for hostile criticism. The 

 glowing rhetoric tliat gave charm to his 

 discourse and the poetic similes that clothed 

 the dry bones of his close-woven logic were 

 attacked by a veritable broadside of crit- 

 ical artillery. At the present day these 

 would be considered as only appropriate 

 artistic embellishments, so great is the un- 

 conscious change Avrought in our surround- 

 ings. It must be remembered that, while 

 Tyndall discussed the evolutionary prob- 

 lem from many points of view, he took up 

 the position of a practical disciple of Na- 

 ture dealing with the known experimental 

 and observational realities of physical in- 

 quiry. Thus he accepted as fundamental 

 concepts the atomic theory, together with 

 the capacity of the atom to be the vehicle 

 or repository of energy, and the grand gen- 

 eralization of the conservation of energy. 

 Without the former, Tyndall doubted 

 whether it would be possible to frame a 

 theory of the material universe; and as to 

 the latter he recognized its radical signifi- 

 cance in that the ultimate philosophical 

 issues therein involved were as yet but 

 dimly seen. That such generalizations are 

 provisionally accepted does not mean that 

 science is not alive to the possibility that 

 what may now be regarded as fundamental 



