197 
in the soul, let the affections by all means be invoked ; but 
they must not be permitted to colour our reports, or to influence 
our acceptance of reports of occurrences in external nature.”* 
The occurrence in external nature before us is the rearing of 
a crystal of common salt. We at once admit that, so far as 
this mere fact is concerned, the feelings can have little to do. 
But Mr. Tyndall reports not only an occurrence, but states 
something entirely different from an occurrence. He affirms 
the idea of self-determining power as an attribute of a mole- 
cule ! There is no question as to the occurrence ; it is the 
doctrine , not the fact, which is of moment in the case. Self- 
determining power, such as Herbert Spencer denies to mind , 
is here predicated of a material atom ! By this doctrine the 
Author of Nature is excluded from Nature ! Have the affec- 
tions no claim here? If not, how can they be rationally 
invoked to kindle religion in the soul ? If there is no living God 
to be known, how can there be religion, either with or with- 
out fire ? So if that God is to be shut out from the universe 
with which physical science has to do, where else is He to be 
sought for ? And, moreover, if there be no God, from whence 
is the moral sense to derive its quickening ? It is, to say the 
least of it, a grievous mistake to imagine that the distressing 
feeling which rises in the soul in view of such ideas as Mr. 
Tyndall here promulgates is the result of prejudice or priest- 
craft. You may as well imagine that any other sensation of the 
soul is the creation of such causes. The sense which revolts 
at the denial of God in the changes of material nature is 
beyond all question a momentous part of the soul of man, and 
never can be safely ignored or mistaken for a moment. 
The culture of this same moral feeling is essential to the 
life of nations. If a people show to a great extent indiffer- 
ence to the great principles of morality, and hence spread 
mischief and misery in society, it will be found more important 
to cultivate their moral sense than merely to expound morals 
after an intellectual method, and to condemn their immorality. 
That culture will be secured by an education which tends to 
draw out the capacity of moral feeling itself, rather than by 
one which drily gives them the rules of conduct. 
The idea which above all else is essential to the culture of 
the moral sense is that of the unchanging right. As the 
diversity of view which prevails regarding what is really right 
does not at all affect the reality of the moral sense, so neither 
does it affect the reality of this vital moral idea. There is one, 
and only one, best route from Liverpool to New York, though 
* Fragments of Science, p. 48. 
