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man.” Dr. Tyndall echoes Mr. Spencer’s avowal: “ As little 
in our day as in Job’s day can man by searching find this 
power out.” Considered fundamentally, he declares “ it is by 
the operation of an insoluble mystery that life is evolved, 
species differentiated, and mind unfolded from their prepotent 
elements in the unmeasurable past.” AVithout staying to 
object to his terms or phraseology, I may for the moment join 
with Dr. Tyndall, and say, “ There is no very rank materialism 
here.” Perhaps not. But when we come to state our theories 
definitely in an attempt to realize, however imperfectly, a whole 
idea of the Universe and its life, we find out where we disagree. 
The matter in debate between the simple-minded Christian and 
the Materialist is not the mode of 'procedure but the nature of 
the power which causes all procedure. Is that power part and 
parcel of the physical world ? Is it inseparably united with or 
inherent in particles of matter ? Is it unable to separate itself 
from matter ? Is it, for instance, indissolubly wedded to the 
bit of protoplasm of the first beginning? Or is it another 
thing, — another reality ? Is it not independent and distinct ? 
Is it not, indeed, extra physical, as it is superhuman ? And are 
we not compelled by the “ impulse inherent in our natures,” 
which Dr. Tyndall starts with, to assign to this mysterious 
Power an entity, an ability, and an activity which can belong 
only to that which is Absolute, Infinite, and Eternal ? I 
have heard it charged against Christian ministers that some- 
times w r e put into the Bible that which the good and great 
men who wrote its books never dreamed of. But I think 
that Dr. Tyndall is even more truly open tc a similar charge, 
that of first putting into his raw material of the Universe 
living power, and quality, and promise to the displacement of 
the necessary God. This result is certainly wonderful, even in 
its human productions. That ridiculous-looking thing, the 
“ Marine Ascidian,” — nay, that even less worthy thing, a bit of 
protoplasm, whatever it may be in the original, contains the 
promise of potency of all that a Milton, a Shakspeare, a Bacon, 
or any genius ever was? We say, in reply to this teaching, 
that scientific experiment does not sanction it. It is the effer- 
vescence of the fancy. It is not the outcome of the scientific 
use of the imagination. It is, I venture to think, contradictory. 
It involves more than mystery, nothing less than impossibility, 
and does violence to reason and experience. Our reason will 
not allow us to place mind lower than the materials of its 
dwelling; will not allow us to say that it is a phenomenon of 
the brain only, the result of certain grey matter in excitement : 
while experience shows us that we must make the mind master 
