U9 



consists only of atoms and molecules " satisfied^ or unsatisfied/^ 

 When Dr. Tyndall admits the facts and then disparages them, as 

 if they were ineradicable fancies, he seems to us like the resolute 

 self-deluding theorist who, shrinking from nothing, exclaimed— 

 Well, I don^t deny the facts, but if the facts be so, as you say, 

 then so much the worse for the facts ! 



27. A world without prayer seems, no doubt, to be necessary 

 to the moral ideal of the materialist ; but he will never get it 

 in the present state of existence. Dr. Tyndall must 



have some such ideal, for he does not despair of re- oi^prlylr***' 

 taining the virtues commonly "termed Christian,^' 

 even as a pure materialist (p. 166). He says that he has "as 

 little fellowship with the atheist, who says there is no God, as 

 with the theist, who professes to know the mind of God ; and 

 he acknowledges with Immanuel Kant, " two things fill me 

 with awe; the starry heavens, and the sense of moral responsi- 

 bility in man^' ! (p. 167). Yet we are to gather from another 

 passage (p. 36) that the moral responsibility^^ tliat so awes 

 him is something independent of that " Free-will in man 

 which was asserted by Professor Mansel in his Bampton Lec- 

 tures ; though Dr. Tyndall still uses the word " wilP-' (p. 106), 

 and in some sense appeals to it ! 



28. If Dr. Tyndall could have abstained from what seems, we 

 fear, his besetting habit of fine writing, he might have told us 

 something more clearly of the kind of moral or ^pp„ai to 

 riffhtful responsibility which is, after all, the offsprinsr the " emcions 



c.c -i. }y ^ i. u u i.1 • u- ^ and affections." 



or '^necessity. But when he approaches this subject 

 he talks persistently in metaphors. It is somewhat trying for 

 plain people to reason with one who tells them that " round 

 about the intellect sweeps the horizon of emotions ; or, that 

 "the circle of human nature is not complete without the arc of 

 feeling^' (p. 104). We would ask, are these " emotions and 

 "feelings'^ to be exercised on facts ? — or, on unrealities, that is, 

 fancies contradicted by facts ? Elsewhere he warns us of an 

 "incongruous mixture of truth and trust^^ (p. 48) ; here he 

 refers us to what he deems the sphere of our "emotions,^' for 

 our morality and our religion, — leaving us to expect that we 

 shall there find ourselves in that land of shadows. "Appeals 

 to the affections are reserved for cases where moral elevation, 

 and not historical conviction, is the aim" (p. 47). We ask, as 

 to these "affections and emotions" which, we are told, are 

 " eminently the court of appeal" — (another metaphor in place 

 of straightforward statement) — "in matters of real religion," 

 are they true? We confess that this moonshine style of writing 

 on such a subject is worse than that too well-known "pictorial 



