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ate told that you and I have come here to-night because we cannot help it— 
that each one of us is simply compelled to do so by an irresistible necessity. 
That is a statement which not a single one of us can be induced to believe by 
any amount of human logic. I will give you an illustration of this. Some 
years ago I gave a lecture in Bradlaugh’s Hall on the subject of human 
responsibility. We have on such occasions a discussion. Well, an atheist 
got up to answer me. He proceeded during about ten minutes to argue that 
he had come there and mounted that platform under an overwhelming 
necessity, which he could not help ; that I in like manner was under an over- 
whelming necessity to go there and lecture, and that the audience had gone 
there under similar circumstances. Now I found that there was no occasion 
to expend more than five or six sentences in answering him, because the whole 
of the auditory turned round and laughed in his face. I am not quite sure that 
it would not be judicious in such cases to follow the general principle which 
the late Lord Melbourne laid down : whatever his defects, he was certainly 
a very shrewd, worldly-wise man. When an objectionable or stupid proposal 
was started, he was in the habit of saying : “ Cannot you leave the thing 
alone 1 ” I think we might almost say the same with regard to Messrs. 
Huxley, Tyndall, and others, and follow this good advice, and leave these 
men to commit moral and intellectual suicide ; for that is really what it 
comes to. There is not a single sentence which Professor Tyndall has 
uttered in the speech here referred to which does not absolutely contradict 
the principles he is laying down. Let us take the passage which is given 
in this paper, on page 93, and upon which he dwells at great length, 
“ Amid all our speculative uncertainty, there is one practical point as clear 
as the day, namely, that the brightness and the usefulness of life, as well as 
its darkness and disaster, depend, to a great extent, upon our own use of this 
miraculous organ,” i.e. the brain. It seems, then, according to Professor 
Tyndal, that there is a we who use the brain. Yet, according to the same 
authority the brain is myself. It is therefore absurd on his principles to talk of 
the use we make of the brain. If we are nothing but a chain of conscious im- 
pressions linked together by an irresistible necessity, w r e must go on grinding 
out results for ever, which we cannot help grinding ; but in asking us to accept 
such a theory he invites us to part company with our consciousness and our 
common sense. Are we to believe that all the activities in the city of 
London on this very day are nothing but a number of series of inevi- 
table necessities ? It is impossible to believe this by any amount of logic 
he can adduce in support of such a proposition. The great danger to 
be encountered is this. Professor Tyndall has a great scientific reputation, 
but here he is dealing with questions he has never studied any more than I 
have studied the special scientific questions with which he deals. He 
proceeds to utter before promiscuous auditories a set of oracles on questions 
which he has never studied. The auditories whom lie addresses, for the 
most part of semi-educated people who go to hear him in consequence 
of his high character in matters of physical science, are apt to forget that 
