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truth " which is not entire, seems profane to those who occupy themselves 

 seriously with the deeper problems of our being. 



In considering the book of the Professor in the preceding address, it was felt 

 that the principal interest of the audience would probably be concentrated on 

 the second chapter of that book, on Prayer and Natural Law. But the task 

 imposed on the lecturer was the review of the teachings of the Professor's 

 volume as a whole, which precluded the possibility of entering into much 

 detail as to any part of it. To indicate the animus, to exhibit the pervading 

 tone, and in some sense detect the moral object of the work, was a more 

 arduous task than to point out the illogical character of certain parts ; and 

 it was all that was possible within the assigned limits. Enough was said, it 

 is hoped, to convict the erroneous hypotheses and fragmentary assumptions 

 of the Professor's essays, so far as they touched philosophy or religion. As 

 the paragraphs of the address are numbered, it will be sufficient to 

 refer to them, and not quote them, in the following remarks, which are 

 intended to show to all experimental physicists, that neither on moral 

 nor religious questions can they accept Professor Tyndall's guidance without 

 giving up reason as well as religion. We shall thus supply, in some measure, 

 a defence of prayer as the habit of the Christian life, which Professor 

 Tyndall and others have ventured so unscientifically to challenge. 



Let it at once be noted that, as to all the first principles of his reasonings, the 

 Professor has the greatest inconsistency : the results of which must be pointed 

 out. He states that the whole stock of energy in the world consists of attrac- 

 tions, repulsions, and motions (Section 7). He rejects as an absurdity all 

 " direct personal volition " as afi'ecting this world ; and here he so expresses 

 himself as to deny alike the will of God and of man (Section 8). He then 

 , illustrates his view by two anecdotes, in which he despises two Roman 

 Catholic clergymen for using prayers for God's blessing on the fruits of the 

 earth, and for favourable mountain weather, as though they expected a 

 miracle ; while he admits that they did not, and does not see that he ought 

 to have suspected that he had misapprehended their " theory of prayer." 

 Instead of this, he only ridicules them for going contrary to his own theory 

 {Section 9, 10.) 



After this general view of the universe — this explanation of what the 

 " whole stock of energy " in the known rerum natura consists of, and this 

 exclusion of all will or " volition," to make his theory complete, he somewhat 

 contradictorily admits that, after all, the molecular groupings and molecular 

 motions which were the whole " energy " in the world, " explain nothing ! " 

 He even descends from his lofty-seeming terminology to speak of this 

 world-wide stock of " energy" as a series of "pushes" and "pulls," without 

 any cause. Now here, at least, was a hiatus in his system, where " volition," 

 one would think, might supply a want ; and had he been a philosopher, 

 instead of an experimentalist only, he would not have hesitated at once to 

 suspend his theory that there was no possible place, except in the imagina- 

 tion of a " savage," for the supposition of volition " in the economy of 

 nature." (Sections 12, 13.) Professor Tyndall, of course, admits that there 



