143 
observation, and takes therefore a most incomplete view of 
truth and reality. 
25. Dr. Tyndall tells us that one of his critics made a mis- 
take in attributing “ wit " to him for saying that he took with 
And of the Switzerland “ two volumes of poetry, Goethe's 
widest range Farbenlehre, and the work on Logic by Mr. Bain." 
Possibly his critic supposed Dr. Tyndall to regard logic 
as light reading, or had met with logical treatises of a fascinating 
ambition, and more allied toimagination than to strictly "rational” 
literature. If so, we can certainly sympathize with the critic, 
and see how he came to misunderstand Dr. Tyndall's ambiguous 
sentence. But we shall intend no “ wit," and fear no mistake 
however, in pointing to poetry as a witness to facts , and facts 
which will refuse to be ignored. We ask men to look for instance 
at the Psalms of David — those marvellous poems of the heart of 
man addressed to the ear of God. “ Hear my prayer, O God ! " 
<f From the ends of the earth I cry unto thee ! " O thou that 
hearest prayer, to thee shall all flesh come ! " Such are utterances 
of human nature always calling aloud for Divine intervention ; 
and the book that contains them has been the world's hand- 
book of devotion, more known and used and loved not only 
than any other book, but more than whole libraries, these 
three thousand years. 
What a book of facts is that Book of Psalms ! What a key 
it is to the history of a vast moral world, known in its fulness to 
Him only who “seeth in secret." Take Dr. Tyndall's word, that 
in a world of necessary causation, all this means nothing — that 
prayer is an “ emotional " operation of so unreal a kind, that a 
decade (p. 45) ought to see the end of it, and what are we to 
make of all these, the widest range of the facts of our nature, 
in the midst of which every attempt at induction is so insig- 
nificant and vain ! 
26. Now, we are not complaining that men of mechanical 
or chemical science do not make it their business at the same 
Facts most fi me to be moral philosophers, and students of the 
unfairly ig- facts of human nature : but we have a right to com- 
plain of their meddling with what they will not take 
the trouble to understand or investigate. We have a right to 
complain of their practically ignoring facts which they acknow- 
ledge to be co- extensive with our existence (p. 46), or treating 
them as unrealities. If it be a fact, as none will question, that 
wherever man is found, in some w^ay “ behold he prayeth," we 
have a right to complain at the attempt of chemists to teach the 
generation now rising up, and teach with a supercilious air of 
authority too, that the whole universe, of which we form a part, 
