83 
life ? Surely the common speech of Prof. Tyndall has made 
him forget his philosophy. It seems a pity that his Ger- 
man studies did not suggest to him the well-worn definition 
from Kant, — from whom he is somewhat fond of quoting com- 
monplaces — that “ an organism is that in which the parts and 
the whole are respectively means and ends.”* How marvellous 
that this commonplace and yet fundamental conception of 
physiology should have been so strangely misconceived, 
through the apparent haste of Prof. Tyndall to give, as he 
does, in the next sentence, an atheistic turn to his very inad- 
equate conception of what an organism is. “ 1 close with the 
conception of Carlyle. The order and energy of the universe 
I hold to be inherent and not imposed from without — the 
expression of fixed law and not of arbitrary will.” In this 
also, he forgets the patent truth that in the judgment of the 
great majority of scientific thinkers an organism in its very 
conception implies intelligence without itself. His confusion 
of mechanical with organic relations is still more apparent, as 
he traces the growth of scientific theories from vague antici- 
pations into verified discoveries and fixed methods, and con- 
cludes with the remark, which is least of all true in respect 
to the science of organized existence, that “the interdependence 
of our day has become quantitative — expressible by numbers — 
leading, it must be added, directly into that inexorable reign 
of law which so many gentle people regard with dread.” 
In one aspect, as we have said, the intent of these prelim- 
inary movements is not very obvious, but in another it is clear 
that they are designed to prepare his heai’ers for the con- 
clusion to which he directs every position of his subsequent 
argument — that the universe of matter and spii’it, including as 
he concedes the phenomena of moral conviction and feeling, 
as also of religious emotion and religious faith, is in every 
process and manifestation subject to no other than mechanical 
laws. 
Thus far the movements have been preliminary. The author 
begins the argument pi’oper with a theme very familiar to 
himself, viz. : the correlation of physical forces. He traces 
the growth of this theory from the first felicitous conjecture 
* “ Ein organisches Product dor Natur ist das in welchem allcs Eweck und 
wechselseitig auch Mittel ist.” Kritik der Urthcils-Kraft, § 661 To under- 
stand the complete significance of this phraseology, the reader must bear in 
mind that Kant denies that a work of art, i.c., a machine of any sort, can 
properly be said to be organic or organized. In this doctrine most scientists 
would agree with him. 
