149 
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- 0 ,uprlyer. lth " 
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 33 1 (p. 167). Yet we are to gather from another 
passage (p. 36) that “ the moral responsibility” that 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 “ will ” (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 AppPal to 
rightful responsibility which is, after all, the offspring the “emotions 
of “necessity.” But when he approaches this subject andaffectlone - 
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 
