M9 COSH'S 
 
 l\EpLyTo 
 TYNDALL. 
 
 ■ 
 
, J flu »<i%i«t| «, 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 Shelf. 
 
 BL 240 .M34 1875 
 McCosh, James, 1811-1894. 
 Ideas in nature overlooked 
 by Dr. Tyndall 
 
Ideas in Nature 
 
 OVERLOOKED BY DR. TYNDALL., 
 
 BEING AN EXAMINATION OF 
 
 DR. TYNDALL'S BELFAST ADDRESS. 
 
 Br 
 JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LL.D.„ 
 
 PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON COLLEGE. 
 
 >2«<C 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 
 
 ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 Cambridge : 
 Press of John Wilson and Son. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 As I was about to sail from Great Britain last autumn, on 
 my return to America, I procured a copy of Dr. Tyndall's 
 Belfast Address, I read it on the deck of the vessel ; 
 allowed the yeast to ferment in my mind during the voy- 
 age ; and, on coming home to Princeton College, I deliv- 
 ered my thoughts (not written out) in an Introductory 
 Lecture to the Class of the History of Philosophy. Ab- 
 stracts of the Lecture were forwarded by my auditors to a 
 few literary journals, and were thence copied into others ; 
 and I thought it advisable to write out fully what I had 
 uttered, and to send it, as I was requested, to a periodical, 
 so deserving of encouragement, the " International Review,'' 
 where it appeared in the opening number of Vol. II. 
 
 I find Dr. Tyndall is sending forth edition after edition 
 of his work in England and in America ; and some are 
 anxious, I know, to have by them, for their own use or for 
 circulation, a calm reply, free from all personalities. So 
 I have consented to this paper appearing, with some addi- 
 tions, in a separate form. 
 
 Dr. Tyndall's Address is now printed with two Prefaces, 
 in which he professes to reply to his critics. The original 
 Address is clear and plausible ; but the Prefaces seem to 
 me to be exceedingly weak, loose, and unsatisfactory. His 
 critics had all advanced objections, less or more valid, to 
 his atomic theory of the universe ; and some of them had 
 
IV PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 pointed out flaws in his scholarship. To none of these 
 does he condescend to offer an answer. The burden of 
 his Prefaces is, ' See how ill-used a man I am : a bishop 
 has been raising a wail ; the Presbyterians have denounced 
 me ; and the Romish hierarchy are ready to persecute me.' 
 He must not be allowed to forget that he himself began the 
 attack, and is carrying on his defence in quite as offen- 
 sive a manner as his opponents ; alleging, charitably, that 
 " the common religion, professed and defended by these 
 different people, is merely the accidental conduit through 
 which they pour their own tempers, lofty or low, courteous 
 or vulgar, mild or ferocious, holy or unholy, as the case 
 may be." Those who criticise him are charged with " de- 
 liberate unfairness," or with " a spirit of bitterness which 
 desires, with a fervor inexpressible in words, my eternal 
 ill." I happen to know of some of them, that they are 
 praying for him, in all humility and tenderness, that he and 
 all others who have come under his influence may be kept 
 from all evil, temporal and eternal. 
 
 Dr. Tyndall thinks that much good may be done in 
 Ireland by the spread of scientific knowledge, as fitted to 
 lessen the bitterness of ecclesiastical feuds. I agree with 
 him here. But, unfortunately, he has only thrown a new 
 element of trouble into the boiling caldron, and, I fear, 
 thrown back the general study of physics in Ireland. I 
 know what I am saying, from having spent sixteen years in 
 that country, which, as an accomplished statesman, at that 
 time Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, once remarked to me, is 
 less inclined towards scepticism than either of the other 
 two kingdoms, — I am inclined to add, than any country 
 in the world. The denominations which are too much dis- 
 posed to war with each other have all combined against Dr. 
 Tyndall, — no, not Dr. Tyndall, but the blank theory which 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. V 
 
 he has expounded. He quotes a maxim of Bacon's, — 
 taken, I may remark, from Plutarch, — " It were better to 
 have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion as 
 is unworthy of him j for the one is unbelief, the other is 
 contumely." But Bacon, in the comprehensiveness of his 
 mighty mind, has a counterpart enunciation : " I had rather 
 believe all the fables in the Talmud and the Alcoran, than 
 that this universal frame is without a mind." " They that 
 deny a God destroy man's nobility : for certainly man is 
 of kin to the beasts by his body ; and, if he be not of kin 
 to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature." 
 
 It should be noticed that in this paper, under none of 
 its forms, have I charged Professor Tyndall with being an 
 atheist. It is evident that his convictions or feelings have 
 passed through various phases, and are at present very 
 wavering and uncertain, — feelings, rather than convic- 
 tions founded on evidence. It might have been better in 
 these circumstances if he had allowed the mud to settle, 
 and had his mind clarified, before he discussed such sub- 
 jects as he has clone at Belfast. v£ut, as he did raise all 
 this disturbance, he might have been better employed in 
 these Prefaces in telling us what he does believe than 
 in complaining that he has been misunderstood, and in 
 speaking contemptuously of men who know what they be- 
 lieve. In this paper I have made no inquiry into his per- 
 sonal belief (for which he is responsible to God, and not 
 to me) ; but I have felt myself justified in looking at the 
 statements he has published, and at the consequences to 
 which they lead, logically, and in the faith of those who 
 adopt them. 
 
 Princeton College, March, 1875. 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 A LL throughout his Belfast Address, Professor 
 ■**• Tyndall defends the right of free thought in 
 such a manner and spirit as to leave the impression 
 that he imagines that this right has been denied 
 him somewhere or by somebody. I have not heard 
 of any one threatening to deprive the savant of his 
 title to think on all subjects scientific and unsci- 
 entific. But there are not a few, scientific as well as 
 unscientific, who doubt whether he showed delicacy or 
 even propriety of feeling in opening what professes 
 to be a purely scientific society with such a specula- 
 tive paper, the more so as no one was allowed to 
 reply to him in the Association. We often find that 
 those who use liberty of speech for themselves, are 
 least inclined to allow a corresponding right to others. 
 All that is claimed in this paper is the privilege which 
 he has employed so freely. I feel perfectly entitled to 
 review his review ; and, in doing so, I appeal to no 
 other tribunal than the one he carries us to, — the 
 laws of the Court of Nature. 
 
 Dr. Tyndall is not regarded in Great Britain as 
 a scientific man of the first order : he is not one 
 of the few stars of the first magnitude. I am not 
 
2 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 aware of any discovery made by him which has 
 opened a new department of nature, or set scientific 
 exploration out in a new direction. But he is thor- 
 oughly at home in the domain of Physics, and by his 
 researches has advanced certain departments of it. 
 There are some who, on the principle of ne sutof 
 ultra crepidam, wish that he would keep within his 
 own magic circle, where he is powerful, and not 
 venture out of it into the wide region of theosophy, 
 where, with his locks shorn by a Delilah in the fas- 
 cinating form of a love of notoriety, he is no stronger 
 than other men. He doubts whether the great New- 
 ton, trained in mathematics and natural philosophy, 
 was fitted to discuss theological subjects. It is a fact 
 that some great biblical scholars take a different view, 
 and speak of Newton as quite capable, by reason of 
 his profound penetration, his long study and deep 
 reverence, to dive into the depth of divine things. 
 It is doubted whether Dr. Tyndall has the same high 
 qualifications ; and those who feel in this way, regret 
 to find him indulging in the construction of theories 
 as to the origin of things, when they would listen to 
 him with great delight dilating on heat and motion, 
 on glaciers and sounds, — and this when they may 
 not be sure that he has come off any higher than 
 second-best in his controversy with Professor Tait, or 
 that he has given the right explanation of the curious 
 phenomena as to sound which he has lately brought 
 before the Royal Society, and which he refers to 
 regions of the air impervious to sound. He is ac- 
 knowledged on all hands to be a brilliant experimenter 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 3 
 
 and a fascinating expounder ; and his British Associa- 
 tion Address is the clearest enunciation and defence 
 of the views of an important school, — constituting a 
 branch of a mutual admiration society — who are 
 ever quoting each other as infallible authorities, — the 
 other members being Professor Huxley, Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer, Mr. Darwin, and Mr. Bain, and a whole host 
 of inferior men who have assisted the leaders in get- 
 ting the British Association very much under their 
 management, as also certain portions of the London 
 press, and, it may be added, not a little of the college 
 patronage of the late liberal administration of Eng- 
 land. We are cherishing the hope that this address, 
 just because it unfolds so openly what was before let 
 out only in hints and prognostications, may tend to 
 produce a reaction in Great Britain ; as men now 
 see — the veil having been lifted from their eyes — 
 whither they are being led. Within the last two 
 years we have seen what a collapse took place when 
 J. S. Mill's autobiography was published, and all men 
 and women discovered into what a dark cavern his 
 philosophy conducted them, with its startling results 
 as to the obligation of marriage ties and the allow- 
 ableness of suicide, with its avowed want of assurance 
 in life or hope in death: we see that they are 
 " without hope " who are " without God." It is pos- 
 sible that a like recoil may be effected, when all men 
 are made to know that our world consists simply of 
 an interaction of atoms within a limited sphere of 
 space and time, encompassed with an impenetrable 
 region of darkness. 
 
4 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 Dr. Tyndall goes back two thousand two hundred 
 years, and quotes a succession of philosophers favor- 
 able to the atomic theory from that time to the pres- 
 ent. His historical sketch is adopted at second-hand, 
 and not from the highest authorities.* Eminent as 
 he is as a scientist (to use a phrase not found in 
 Samuel Johnson, but required by the subdivision of 
 knowledge in our day), there is no proof that he has 
 studied philosophy, or that he is specially a philos- 
 opher : he is certainly not a rigid reasoner, and he 
 overleaps wide gaps in constructing his theories. He 
 quotes lovingly such men as Democritus, Epicurus, 
 Lucretius, Bruno, Gassendi, Hume, and Goethe ; but 
 has taken no notice of the views of others, usually 
 
 * Blunders, such as are sure to be committed by one not master 
 of the subject, and trusting to secondary authorities, crop out ever 
 and anon. Thus he talks of Empedocles " noticing this gap in the 
 doctrine of Democritus ; " whereas every tyro in philosophy knows 
 that Empedocles comes before Democritus. Speaking of the cen- 
 turies lying between Democritus and Lucretius, he makes Pytha- 
 goras then perform "his experiments on the harmonic intervals," as 
 if Pythagoras had not died before Democritus was born. He repre- 
 sents Aristotle as preaching induction without practising it ; whereas 
 he did practise induction in his natural history, but certainly did not 
 preach it as Bacon afterwards did. He ascribes, it could be shown, 
 a doctrine to Protagoras, the sophist, which no scholar would attrib- 
 ute to him. A writer (Thomas Davidson), in the October number of 
 the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy," proves that he has not 
 given a thoroughly correct account even of the philosophy of his 
 favorite Democritus ; whom he represents as making all the varie- 
 ties of things depend on the varieties of atoms " in number, size, and 
 aggregation," whereas Aristotle, the only original authority on this 
 subject, says that he made them depend on the "figure, aggregation, 
 and position." In the same article it is shown that Dr. Tyndall mis- 
 takes throughout in the few allusions he makes to Aristotle. 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 5 
 
 reckoned the profoundest thinkers of our world, — 
 except, indeed, to speak of the oppression laid on 
 thought by Plato and Aristotle. I mean to supply 
 the inexcusable omission, and to place alongside of 
 the atomic theory the grand truths unfolded by the 
 great philosophers of ancient and modern times ; and 
 show that their anticipations, often vague and mystical, 
 have been made certain by the certain methods of 
 modern science. When these overlooked agencies 
 are mixed up with the atoms, and made to act with 
 them and counteract them, the result may be a har- 
 monious whole, quite consistent with religion, natural 
 and revealed. 
 
 It is a well-known historical fact that, somewhere 
 about 600 c.c, there was a remarkable awakening, 
 over many countries, of reflective, as distinguished 
 from spontaneous, thought. From the beginning, 
 men had observed the works of nature, — the seasons, 
 seeds, plants, animals, and the diurnal and annual 
 movements of the heavenly bodies, and turned them 
 to practical use. But, from the time referred to, there 
 were penetrating minds that were not satisfied with 
 practical or phenomenal knowledge ; but insisted on 
 going beneath the surface, and inquiring into the 
 nature and origin of things. In this age appeared 
 Cakya Muni', the founder of the comparatively pure 
 but inane system of Boodhism ; Confucius, the great 
 moralist of China ; and, according to some, Zoroaster, 
 the reformer of the Magian religion. But the systems 
 of these men were theosophic or ethical, and do not 
 throw any light on the physical phenomena of the 
 
6 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 universe ; and so we turn to the rise of the Greek 
 philosophy. 
 
 Three great schools appear almost simultaneously 
 The inquiry of each is what is the cipx 7 l or principle 
 of all things. One, the Ionian, whose seat was 
 Miletus or Ephesus, explained nature by elements, 
 commonly by some favorite element: as Thales, by 
 water or moisture ; Anaximenes, by air or ether ; and 
 Heraclitus, an offshoot from the school, by fire. We 
 have here brought before us the deep truth which 
 modern chemistry is unfolding. The things which 
 we see are compound, and if we would understand 
 them we must trace them back to their components. 
 Another school, the Pythagorean or Italic, whose 
 seat was Magna Grecia, could not be satisfied with 
 these ever-changing elements, and discovered higher 
 and more permanent principles subordinating them in 
 the orderly forms which things are made to assume, 
 and in the numerical relations running through them ; 
 so that, in fact, things are the copies of numbers. They 
 delighted to trace, often in a mystic way, the properties 
 of figures and of numbers, and were especially the 
 mathematical school of Greece. They made the earth 
 revolve round the Hestia, or hearth of the universe, and 
 thus suggested the Copernican theory of the heavens. 
 They saw a universally prevalent order, — Pythagoras 
 heard the music of the spheres ; and they called the 
 heaven, from the earth upward, Cosmos, — a word 
 which has been fondly retained as embodying a great 
 truth. About the same time arose another school, the 
 Eleatic, which affected to go deeper down into the 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 7 
 
 nature of things, and by pure reason found beneath 
 all apparent mutation an essential Being, which has 
 not come into existence, and which is imperishable. 
 The poem of Parmenides opens with an allegory of 
 the soul longing after truth, drawn on by steeds led 
 by virgins along a road untrodden by men, on the 
 road from darkness to light, and brought to the throne 
 of Dike, who reveals the unchangeable heart of truth. 
 In this we have an anticipation of the doctrine, that 
 the sum of matter and force cannot be increased or 
 diminished by creature action, but remains for ever 
 the same, thus giving a stability to nature. 
 
 A hundred years later, and other profound truths 
 are started by great thinkers. Anaxagoras is of Clazo- 
 menae, but removes to Athens (which is to become 
 the eye of Greece), and is intimate with Pericles. 
 Starting from the Ionic point, he is not satisfied that 
 every thing can be accounted for by elements, and he 
 calls in an intelligence (vovs) to arrange (Bia/cosfjuelv) 
 them. When Socrates heard of Anaxagoras bringing in 
 intelligence, he sent for his books, and was astonished, 
 after finding him arranging all things by reason, 
 employing " air, ether, water, and many other things 
 out of place." But this criticism of Socrates, and a 
 like criticism in the next age by Aristotle, show that 
 neither of these philosophers was able to rise to the 
 same elevated position as Anaxagoras ; who was quite 
 consistent in holding that all things might be disposed 
 by Divine reason, and yet be carried on by physical 
 agents, such as " air, ether, and water." The same 
 philosopher contributed another thought. He repre- 
 
8 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 sented nature as composed of different things, made 
 up of equal parts (6/ioio/M€p?j) ; thus starting the doctrine 
 of definite proportions, which is the true doctrine of 
 all chemistry, and this whether these proportions are 
 caused by atoms or no, or whether indeed there be 
 such things as atoms. About the same time Em- 
 pedocles, of Agrigentum in Sicily, fabled as perishing 
 in the flames of Etna which he was desirous of look- 
 ing into, gave to the world another imperishable 
 thought. He used all the four elements of the older 
 philosophers ; but gave to them loves and hatreds, 
 friendships and enmities, drawing them toward each 
 other, and driving them away from each other. This 
 has culminated in the idea of the attractive and re- 
 pulsive powers of nature. We may allow Dr. Tyndall 
 to give an account of the atomic theory of Democritus, 
 who belonged to Abdera in Thrace. His tenets are : — 
 
 " I. From nothing comes nothing. Nothing that exists can be de- 
 stroyed. All changes are due to the combination and separation of 
 molecules. 2. Nothing happens by chance. Every occurrence has its 
 cause, from which it follows by necessity. 3. The only existing things 
 are the atoms and empty space; all else is mere opinion. 4. The 
 atoms are infinite in number, and infinitely various in form ; they strike 
 together, and the lateral motions and whirlings which thus arise are 
 the beginnings of worlds. 5. The varieties of all things depend upon 
 the varieties of their atoms, in number, size, and aggregation. 6. The 
 soul consists of free, smooth, round atoms, like those of fire. These 
 are the most mobile of all. They interpenetrate the whole body, and in 
 their motions the phenomena of life arise. Thus the atoms of Demo- 
 critus are individually without sensation ; they combine in obedience 
 to mechanical law ; and not only organic forms, but the phenomena of 
 sensation and thought, are also the result of their combination." 
 
 Some of these points have not been established. One 
 of them seems to combine utterly incongruous things : 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 9 
 
 it accounts for sensations and thoughts, for pain and 
 pleasure, for love and hate, for judgment and deduction, 
 for ideas of good and evil, for noble aspirations and 
 high purposes, by atoms smooth and round ; as if there 
 was not a fathomless gap between smoothness and 
 sensation, between roundness and reasoning. 
 
 Immediately after this appeared the Sophists, who 
 may have done good in some instances by their pro- 
 fessional teaching, for which they deserved their fee : 
 but the charge remains that they were not seekers 
 after truth ; and it is a fact that they did not add one 
 great principle to the body of philosophy, while they 
 did much to undermine the whole by maintaining 
 that there is no absolute truth, and that truth is only 
 relative to the man who "troweth." Their chief 
 opponent was Socrates, who formally announced one 
 great truth, which all men had been spontaneously 
 discerning and following, that there are purpose and 
 design in every part of the animal frame : pointing to 
 the eye of man, with its delicate structure, and to its 
 eyelids, which open and close for the protection of the 
 organ ; to the ear, which collects the sounds and keeps 
 them separate ; and to the teeth, which in front are 
 fit for cutting, and behind for grinding. He discovers 
 everywhere a providence, and believed himself guided, 
 not by a daimon, but by a daimonion, a divine influ- 
 ence. His great disciple, Plato, rose to a grander, if 
 net a more important, truth, that there is an Idea 
 which has been in or before the divine mind from 
 all eternity, which is the pattern after which all natu- 
 ral things in heaven and earth are formed, and to the 
 
IO IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 contemplation of which the soul of man, formed in 
 the image of God, may rise as its highest exercise. 
 One of the interlocutors asks whether this paradigm 
 is to be seen in the dust of the earth, and Socrates, 
 who is expounding the idea, is not able to answer; 
 in modern times the scientific man would place the 
 dust under the microscope, and show in it the most 
 beautiful crystalline forms. 
 
 But the philosopher who had the most enlarged 
 comprehension of the deep thoughts embodied in the 
 universe was Aristotle, great as a metaphysician, 
 great as a logician, and great as a naturalist. In his 
 usual manner, he employs for explanation a very 
 familiar example, that of a statue of Hercules in a 
 temple. To the question, What is the cause of this 
 statue ? four answers may be given : as to its matter, 
 it is made of marble ; as to what produces it, it is the 
 workman with his hammer and chisel ; as to its form, 
 it is a representation of Hercules ; as to its end, it is 
 to adorn this temple. So, in regard to every natural 
 object, we may seek and find four kinds of causes, — 
 using the term cause in a wider sense than we now 
 do : a material cause, the constituents, say elements 
 or atoms ; the efficient cause, the power, divine or 
 creaturely, working in it ; the formal cause, the order 
 manifested in it, as in the plant or animal ; and the 
 final cause, the end which it, say the eye or hand, 
 is meant to serve. I am sure that Aristotle is right 
 in encouraging us to seek for all these causes or 
 principles in nature, and that they are taking a narrow 
 and unsatisfactory view who are overlooking any one 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. II 
 
 of them. In accounting for all things by atoms, 
 Tyndall has seen only one of them, and that the least 
 elevated, — the material cause ; and takes no notice, 
 though he knows that they exist, of the forces which 
 make the atoms play, or of the beautiful forms which 
 they assume, and the beneficent purposes which they 
 serve. 
 
 The Stoics delighted to dwell on the unity of the 
 universe, and pointed out its perfect harmony. They 
 had an anticipative view of the doctrine that heat will 
 at last absorb all things into itself, out of which a new 
 world will issue. The atomic theory was adopted 
 from Democritus by the Epicureans, and was wrought 
 into a gorgeous form by the Latin poet Lucretius. 
 Neither Democritus nor Epicurus was a professed 
 atheist; on the contrary, both held that the gods 
 made themselves known to man by images or effluxes 
 from heaven. But Lucretius propounds his theory 
 to deliver men from all belief in the gods and super- 
 stitious fears, and represents death as the cessation 
 of existence. It is instructive to observe what a run 
 there is in the present day after Lucretius, both by 
 classicists and physicists. He is declared to be the 
 greatest of the Latin poets, and placed above Virgil 
 and Horace. His arguments and his rich descriptions 
 are quoted, and students have to wade through the 
 mantled pool of his erotics to pluck his flowers. It 
 is curious to notice how a philosophy seeks for and 
 creates a poetry suited to it. The philosophy of Epi- 
 curus, so prevalent among the Romans, culminated 
 in " De Rerum Natura ; " it has to be added, in the 
 
 
12 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 licentious pictures on the walls of Pompeii and Her- 
 culaneum. The philosophy of Locke and Bolingbroke 
 found appropriate verses in Pope. The subjective 
 philosophy of Kant came forth in the grand German 
 poetry of the beginning of this century. The physi- 
 cal philosophy of our day has already got a sensuous 
 poetry in works which will doubtless be followed by 
 others. It is because philosophy calls forth such 
 influences, that it comes to have a sway over national 
 character. We can believe with Montesquieu that 
 the Epicurean philosophy exercised an influence in 
 deteriorating the character of the Romans, in hasten- 
 ing their ripeness into rottenness, and determining 
 their fall ; we can understand this when we look into 
 these fragments of obscene Epicurean verses which 
 have come out of the fires of Pompeii to testify against 
 the inhabitants. We confess that we have fears of 
 the results when the new physics come to crystallize 
 into the creed of the rising generation, and to lead the 
 literature and inspire the prevailing sentiment of the 
 age. 
 
 Dr. Tyndall has no appreciation of the benefit con- 
 ferred on science by Christianity in introducing new 
 and lofty ideas : in showing that there is only one 
 God, and thus preparing the way for the doctrine that 
 there is a unity in nature ; in leading men to expect 
 that there are order and wisdom through all God's 
 works ; in making the study of nature a duty we owe 
 to God ; and in giving us exalted views of the soul as 
 fashioned after the Divine image. He speaks in dis- 
 paraging language of the scholastic ages, whose func- 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE, 13 
 
 tion it was to preserve, all through the cold winter, 
 those seeds which had been deposited by ancient 
 thought, and which were ready to sprout at the return 
 of spring. He might have spoken with more respect 
 of the mediaeval ages, had he reflected that in them 
 more new metals were discovered than in all the 
 Greek and Roman times. 
 
 It is an interesting circumstance, that Bacon re- 
 tained the four causes of Aristotle, and gave to each 
 of them an important place ; allotting material and 
 efficient causes to physics, and formal and final causes 
 to metaphysics, which he places above physics. The 
 grand end of science is to discover, first, axioms, or, as 
 we call them, laws of phenomena, and finally causes 
 and forms. Final and formal causes, at the top of the 
 pyramid, lift us up to God. It has often been said 
 that Bacon set aside final causes. This is an entire 
 mistake. Right or wrong, he gave them no place in 
 physics ; but he allotted them the main place in 
 metaphysics, the highest office of which is to carry 
 us to the Supreme. 
 
 Mr. Darwin represents Prof. Huxley as the philoso- 
 pher of his school ! As if to justify this, the professor 
 has of late years taken Descartes under his special 
 protection, though he does not seem capable of under- 
 standing, certainly not of appreciating, the deeper 
 tenets of that greatest of French philosophers. The 
 grand merit of Descartes is that he drew the distinc- 
 tion so definitely between matter and mind, between 
 extension and thought, showing that extension had 
 no capacity to produce thinking. Newton, like Bacon, 
 
14 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 was favorably inclined to the theory of atoms or mole- 
 cules, but thought it necessary to call in a God to 
 arrange them and make them work harmoniously. 
 His great rival, the highest of all the German phi- 
 losophers, Leibnitz, in order to account for the opera- 
 tions of nature, felt it necessary to call in, not only 
 forces, but a pre-established harmony. Two horologes 
 keep the same time, not by influencing each other 
 causally, but because of a set of agencies instituted 
 in each and issuing in the same result. So through 
 all nature there is, says Leibnitz, a set of agencies 
 which do so work that every one thing operates 
 in harmony with every other. It is here, if we do 
 not mistake, that God finds the means of answering 
 prayer, which Dr. Tyndall boldly says cannot bring 
 a return.* 
 
 He gives us an imaginary conversation between a 
 disciple of Epicurus and Bishop Butler. Epicurus 
 is fitly represented ; but I venture to say that, if 
 Butler were alive, he would give a much weightier 
 defence than has been put into his mouth by the 
 President of the British Association. The grand 
 merit of Butler is that he has found in the very con- 
 
 * Prayer is a duty ; and he who prays believes that he will receive 
 an answer in some way, but may not be able to specify the way. It 
 may turn out that the answer comes by pre-established harmony, or, 
 what is the same thing, by the Divine fore-ordination proclaimed in 
 Scripture. The prayer and its answer may be joined, not by physical 
 nor even by causal connection, but in the counsels of God, who has 
 planned, without at all interfering with free will, that there should be 
 both, and that the answer should be brought about by God's own 
 natural agents formed into laws which "continue this day according 
 to his ordinances, for all are his servants." (Ps. cxix. 91.) 
 

 IDEAS IN NATURE. 1 5 
 
 stitution of our nature the conscience, as a law which 
 asserts of itself that it is supreme in the mind, and 
 subject only to the great Lawgiver to whom it points. 
 In the same century the Scotch philosopher, Reid, 
 demonstrated that there were principles in our nature, 
 self-evident and irresistible, from which there is no 
 appeal; and the great German metaphysician, Kant, 
 holds that there are forms of thought which are nec- 
 essary and universal, and that there is a categorical 
 imperative which guarantees the existence of God, the 
 Good. He who holds firmly by these truths may let 
 men employ the atomic theory as they please, to ac- 
 count for the constitution of the universe. 
 
 Two great scientific truths have been established 
 in this century. One is the doctrine of the conserva- 
 tion of energy, which implies that all the physical 
 forces are correlated, and that the sum of force, 
 potential and actual, in the universe, is always one 
 and the same. The men who did most to prepare 
 the way for this doctrine — such as Newton, Davy, 
 Oersted, Herschel, and Faraday — all delighted to see 
 God in his works ; and the living philosopher who was J 
 the main agent in discovering it, Dr. Mayer, has a 
 mind filled with the presence of God, and looks on 
 force as the expression of the Divine power. The 
 other great doctrine is that of development, acknowl- 
 edged as having an extent which was not dreamed of 
 till the researches of Darwin were published. How 
 far evolution is to be carried is a disputed point among 
 naturalists. Darwin seems to have a great antipathy 
 to final cause ; but he has somehow or other convinced 
 
 
16 
 
 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 himself that there is a God, and is obliged to call in 
 three or four germs, or at least one germ, created by 
 God. It could easily be shown that the doctrine of 
 development, properly understood, and kept within 
 inductive limits, is not inconsistent with final cause ; 
 for we may discern a plan and a purpose, means and 
 end, in the way in which plants and animals are 
 evolved, and in the forms they take, which are evi- 
 dently not by chance, — if the word has any meaning, 
 
 — or by blind atoms, but according to a progression 
 foreseen from the first, and proceeding in a determined 
 order. 
 
 Professor Tyndall thinks he can account for every 
 thing by atoms, and he reaches the conclusion that 
 there is nothing but matter. "Abandoning all dis- 
 guise, the confession I feel bound to make before 
 you is, that I prolong the vision backward across the 
 boundary of the experimental evidence, and discover 
 in that matter which we in our ignorance, and not- 
 withstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, 
 have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise 
 and potency of every quality of life." " The doctrine 
 of evolution derives man in his totality from the in- 
 teraction of organism and environment through count- 
 less ages." A few years ago Dr. Tyndall, in a Lecture 
 
 — now published as an appendix to his Address, — 
 seemed to use different language, and allowed freely 
 that we cannot see any nexus between cerebral action 
 and thought, or discover why a movement of the brain 
 should lead to mental exercise. But this was never 
 intended to mean much ; for Dr. Tyndall would say 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE, 1 7 
 
 that just as little do we know how oxygen attracts 
 hydrogen. And so he feels himself entitled to hold 
 that matter, though we cannot say how, may give us 
 all the operations of understanding and will. 
 
 He accounts for every thing in our world by atoms. 
 This leads us to inquire what we really know about 
 these atoms of which so much is made. First, we 
 seem to be obliged by a sort of necessity of thought 
 or speech to fall back on some such conception. If 
 every thing we see in the world be composite, and 
 capable of analysis and division, we have to think and 
 talk of something indivisible and undecomposable, 
 which we may call particles, molecules, or atoms. 
 But this necessity in thinking does not imply that 
 there are any such actual existences, any more than 
 the corresponding mathematical ideas about points, 
 lines, surface, show that there is such a thing as posi- 
 tion without magnitude, or length without breadth, or 
 a surface without depth. For the evidence of the 
 reality of an atom we must appeal, not to pure thought, 
 but to observation. But, then, no one ever saw an 
 atom or handled an atom ; the microscope has not yet 
 been constructed which can see it, nor the balance 
 which can weigh it. 
 
 What proof have we, then, of the existence of such 
 indivisibles ? The answer, as I understand, is that 
 we require to posit them to account for the nature, 
 the structure, and the operations of material sub- 
 stances. There is, first, the fact that elementary 
 bodies combine in certain proportions. All, how- 
 ever, that this establishes, as our best chemists ac- 
 
l8 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 knowledge, is only a doctrine of proportions or 
 equivalents. Dalton and others have tried to ac- 
 count for these proportions, by showing that they 
 arise from atoms having specific weights and shapes. 
 The attempt has not been altogether satisfactory, as 
 in chemical combinations the atom, as determined 
 by the balance, frequently exhibits a wide range of 
 deportment, coming under the head of what chemists 
 call quantivalency or atomicity. Secondly, there are 
 the mathematical figures of crystals, which may be 
 supposed to be built up by regular shaped atoms, just 
 as a house is by bricks. Unfortunately, the same 
 substance, sulphur for example, takes allotropic forms 
 which are incompatible ; that is, cannot proceed from 
 any one simple form of atom. Once more, there is 
 the internal mobility of every material substance, 
 which seems to show the constant action of mole- 
 cules, or at least of something inconceivably small. 
 Such considerations seem to make it probable that 
 there are very small bodies conducting a great part 
 of the actual operations of nature. But every sage 
 man will admit that what we affirm of atoms is only 
 provisionally true. Science in its present state seems 
 to be waiting for some new Newton, Lavoisier, Dalton, 
 or Mayer to furnish the precise conception and ex- 
 pression for what is loose, floating, and somewhat 
 incongruous. It has to be added that there is an 
 increasing number of savants favorably disposed to 
 the theory of Leibnitz, mathematically expressed by 
 Boscovich, and received, though vaguely apprehended, 
 by the great experimental philosopher, Faraday, that 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 1 9 
 
 matter consists merely of centres of force acting all 
 around them according to certain laws, and producing 
 that resistance which we attribute to extended bodies. 
 The difficulty pressing on this theory is, Can it account 
 for the inertia of body ? In these circumstances, how 
 rash, with our present knowledge, to account for the 
 whole formation and state of the universe by things 
 of which we know so little ! 
 
 It is admitted that, by the finest instrument, we 
 can discover matter only in a molar state, that is, in 
 masses. The smallest possible mass is called a mole- 
 cule. But we are obliged to suppose that this molecule 
 is compound : the molecule of water is composed of 
 oxygen and hydrogen ; we can separate the oxygen 
 and the hydrogen, — we suppose, the atom of hydrogen 
 from the atoms of oxygen. We cannot have the atom 
 of either of these elements alone or by itself : we can 
 separate the atom of hydrogen only by its being united 
 with something else. Even when we have pure hy- 
 drogen, we take for granted that it is composed of 
 molecules having two or more atoms of hydrogen 
 combined. 
 
 Atoms are the smallest possible portions of matter 
 which can enter into a combination. According to the 
 common apprehension, they are hard, impenetrable 
 bodies, with a definite shape, which is unknown, and 
 a power of action, of polar action. The negative end 
 of the one attracts the positive end of the other. 
 They act on other atoms all through space, according 
 to the mass, and on every one atom according to the 
 square of the distance. This is in accordance with the 
 
20 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 doctrine which the author of this paper has long been 
 maintaining, that all material action consists in the mut- 
 ual action of two or more bodies on each other, probably 
 in the action on each other of two or more atoms. 
 
 By far the clearest and most satisfactory account of 
 molecules which we have seen is in a paper read before 
 the British Association at Bradford, in 1873, by Prof . 
 Clerk Maxwell, of Aberdeen. The mass, weight, and 
 properties of a molecule are unalterable. Though 
 indestructible, it is not hard or rigid, but is capable of 
 internal movements, and when they are repeated it 
 emits rays. They are flying all through the atmos- 
 phere, quicker than a cannon-ball, at the rate of about 
 seventeen miles in the minute, and they diffuse through- 
 out nature, matter and momentum and temperature. 
 We know of three distinguished men who have been 
 trying to discover their size and weight : Loschmidt, 
 Mr. Stoney, of Dublin, and Sir William Thomson, of 
 Glasgow ; and, it is calculated that about two millions 
 of molecules of hydrogen in a row would occupy a 
 millimetre ; and that in a cubic centimetre of any gas, 
 at a standing pressure and temperature, there are 
 about nineteen million million million molecules. A 
 million million million million of them would weigh 
 between four and five grammes. 
 
 Mr. Maxwell arrives at a much more philosophical 
 conclusion than Dr. Tyndall : " The exact quality of 
 each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as 
 Sir John Herschel has well said, the essential character 
 of a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its 
 being eternal and self-existent." He discovers in the 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 21* 
 
 very nature and properties of a molecule a proof of 
 design : " A - collocation,' to use the expression of Dr. 
 Chalmers, ' of things which we have no difficulty in 
 imagining to have been arranged otherwise.'" He 
 thus closes: "Though in the course of ages catas- 
 trophes have occurred and may yet occur in the 
 heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and 
 new systems evolved out of their ruins, the moleclues 
 out of which these systems are built — the foundation- 
 stones of the material universe — remain unbroken and 
 unworn. They continue this day as they were created, 
 perfect in number and measure and weight ; and, from 
 the ineffaceable characters inpressed on them, we may 
 learn that those aspirations after accuracy in meas- 
 urement, truth in statement, and justice in action, 
 which we reckon our noblest attributes as men, are 
 ours because they are essential constituents of the / 
 image of Him, who, in the beginning, created not only 
 the heaven and the earth, but the materials of which 
 heaven and earth consist." 
 
 To show how little agreement there is among sci- 
 entific men as to the constitution of matter, I may 
 quote the language of an original observer and a sug- 
 gestive writer, Prof. T. Sterry Hunt, in a paper read 
 at the Centennial of Chemistry: " In chemical change 
 the uniting bodies come to occupy the same space at 
 the same time, and the impenetrability of matter is 
 seen to be no longer a fact, the volume of the com- 
 bining masses is confounded, and all the physical 
 and physiological characters which are our guides in 
 the region of physics fail us, gravity alone excepted : 
 
22 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 the diamond dissolves in oxygen gas, and the identity 
 of chlorine and sodium are lost in that of sea salt. 
 To say that chemical union is in its essence identifi- 
 cation, as Hegel has defined it, appears to me the 
 simplest statement conceivable. The type of the 
 chemical process is found in whatever form which it 
 is possible, under changed physical conditions, to 
 regenerate the original species. Can our science 
 affirm more than this ? and are we not going beyond 
 the limits of a sound philosophy, when we endeavor, by 
 hypotheses of hard particles with void spaces, of atoms 
 and molecules with bonds and links, to explain chem- 
 ical affinities ? And when we give a concrete form to 
 our mechanical conceptions of the great laws of defi- 
 nite and multiple proportions to which the chemical 
 process is subordinated, let us not confound the 
 image with the thing itself ; until, in the language of 
 Brodie, in the discussion of this very question, we 
 mistake the suggestions of fancy for the reality of 
 nature and we cease to distinguish between conjecture 
 and fact." The difficulty is not removed by this doc- 
 trine, nor is the subject made more comprehensible by 
 the Hegelian expression (for it is nothing else) identi- 
 fication ; for we still put the question, what are the 
 things which thus occupy the same space at the same 
 time, which are thus dissolved, thus seen to be identi- 
 cal ? Atoms ? or what else ? 
 
 Atoms and molecules are admissible, because they so 
 far account for the shapes and activities of molar mat- 
 ter falling under the senses. But they do not explain, 
 and do not even seem to explain, the laws and opera- 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 23 
 
 tions of mind, — of sensation, judgment, reason; of 
 love, passion, resolution. There is no proof that 
 therels sensation in any one of these atoms, or that 
 sensation will be produced by two or more of them 
 striking against each other. We may be able to 
 account for the shapes of a stone or mountain, of a 
 planet or star, by atomic agglomerations. But can 
 we, with any appearance of plausibility, account in 
 this way for the affection of a mother for her son, of a 
 patriot for his country, of a Christian for his Saviour ? 
 Aggregate them as you choose, and let them dance as 
 they will, there does not seem to be any power in them 
 to generate the fancies of Shakespeare, — his Hamlet, 
 his Lady Macbeth, his King Lear, — the sublimities 
 of Milton, the penetration of Newton, or the moral 
 grandeur of the death of Socrates. We can conceive 
 them to fashion the bodily shape of Prof. Tyndall as 
 he addressed the Belfast audience ; but we have some 
 difficulty in conceiving how they should compose the 
 discourse which he delivered, — not only the words 
 but the thoughts, the theories, — and give rise to the 
 approbations and disapprobations in the minds of his 
 audience. Atoms may come in appropriately enough 
 in the one case ; but all, except those who have gazed \ 
 so long on them that they have become magnified 
 beyond their proper bulk, feel that they have no fit- 
 ting place in the other. What — to employ the very 
 mildest form of rebuke — can be the use of devising 
 hypotheses which have not even the semblance of 
 explaining the phenomena ? In the interest of sci-l 
 ence, not to speak of religion, it is of moment at this 
 
24 IDEAS IN NATURE, 
 
 present time to lay an arrest on such rash speculations ; 
 and to insist on scientific men refraining from what 
 Bacon denounces as "anticipations of nature," and 
 confining themselves to facts and the co-ordination 
 of facts. 
 
 "I am blamed," says our lecturer, "for crossing the 
 boundary of the experimental evidence. I reply that 
 this is the habitual action of the scientific mind, at 
 least of that portion of it which applies itself to physi- 
 cal investigation." He tells us that " the kingdom of 
 science cometh not by observation and experiment 
 alone, but is completed by fixing the roots of obser- 
 vation and experiment in a region inaccessible to both, 
 and in dealing with which we are forced to fall back 
 upon the picturing power of the mind." Is this a safe 
 ground on which, it seems, a certain portion of the 
 scientific mind has fallen back, "upon the picturing 
 power of the mind " ? Every one knows how apt the 
 mind is to picture things which have no reality, and 
 how apt every mind would be, on such a system, to 
 draw its own pictures. It is surely time to lay a re- 
 straint of a stringent kind upon the use, or rather 
 abuse, of the imagination in science. It is curious to 
 notice that, while M. Comte, the founder of the Posi- 
 tive School, sought to restrain science to the obser- 
 vation of phenomena, meaning by phenomena only 
 sensible phenomena, the school which has sprung from 
 him has broken his trammels, and is revelling in all 
 sorts of hypotheses, about the origin of things, about 
 world-making and world-ending. Mr. Mill is partly 
 responsible for this. The book on Induction in his 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 25 
 
 "Logic " is a very valuable one ; but he has dwelt rr.ore 
 on the mental processes involved than on what Bacon 
 places first and last, — the gathering of facts, the col- 
 lation of facts, with the " necessary rejections and 
 exclusions." The process recommended by Mill is 
 deduction rather than induction : it consists in form- 
 ing hypotheses, in deducing from them, and in verify- 
 ing them. So we have now, cold Positivism having 
 been broken up, a freshet of hypotheses : the atomic 
 hypothesis, the development hypothesis, the pangene- 
 sis hypothesis, — no one of which, it is acknowledged, 
 is capable of direct proof. I am not maintaining that 
 hypotheses should never be devised. But there never 
 was more need than now of imposing restrictions upon 
 them. First, an hypothesis should not be started till 
 there has been an extensive induction of facts ; and 
 the hypothesis should grow out of the facts, and 
 not out of the picturing power of the mind. Sec- 
 ondly, it should be regarded by those who advance it, 
 and be announced by those who use it, as a mere 
 hypothesis, till such time as it is established. Thirdly, 
 the apparent exceptions should be noted and stated ; 
 i. e. y the hypothesis should be modified so as to take 
 in these, and not be adopted till it explains them. 
 Fourthly, an hypothesis, as long as it is a mere hy- 
 pothesis, should not be employed to establish a doc- 
 trine, say a religious or an anti-religious one. 
 
 I admit that we may legitimately cross the boundary 
 of experimental evidence, taking "experimental" in 
 its restricted sense. But as we do so, let us know and 
 acknowledge that we are doing so, and clearly announce 
 
26 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 what other method we are following, and let not this 
 be the pictorial one. Physical science, as science, 
 should be rigidly confined to experimental evidence ; 
 and, as the " British Association " professes to be for 
 " the advancement of science," the places inviting the 
 meetings should let those who manage the society 
 know that they should confine themselves to their 
 own rich and ample domain. 
 
 I acknowledge that there are means of reaching 
 truth other than mere experiment. Mental, as well as 
 material facts, are to be observed and weighed by 
 those who would reach the higher and deeper verities 
 of nature. Some truths are known by intuition, and 
 called first truths ; some are reached by deduction, as 
 in mathematics ; and more by a judicious combination 
 of intuition, induction, and deduction. But let these 
 methods, and the principles or facts they employ, 
 be distinguished in the mind of the investigator, 
 and be kept separate in the exposition of his views. 
 The mixing of these things leads to their being con- 
 founded, and the issue is utter confusion. How pro- 
 found the wisdom in the warning of Bacon, " This folly 
 is the more to be prevented and restrained, because 
 not only fantastical philosophy, but heretical religion, 
 spring from the absurd mixture of things divine 
 and human ! " Bacon maintained that men could go 
 beyond mere material and efficient causes to other and 
 higher, — to final and formal. But he allotted these 
 last to a separate department. While he confined 
 physics to material and efficient causes, he reserved 
 for metaphysics the inquiry into the final and formal. 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 2*] 
 
 Combining the other allowable modes of inquiry with 
 the experimental, we may discover great principles 
 overlooked by Tyndall, but having a deep foundation 
 in nature. Let us look at some of these. 
 
 Intelligence. Dr. Tyndall refers to some great man 
 not named by him. " Did I not believe," said a great 
 man to me once, " that an Intelligence is at the heart 
 of things, my life on earth would be intolerable." 
 Surely Dr. Tyndall's acquaintanceship must be con- 
 fined to a very small circle, if he has only met with 
 one man uttering such a sentiment. It is the spon- 
 taneous feeling of humanity. Anaxagoras only ex- 
 pressed what all men, not led astray by sophistry, had 
 felt ; and he was farther right when he believed that 
 the presence of Intelligence was quite compatible 
 with the operation of physical agents. / 
 
 We are not inquiring at present whether pantheism 
 or theism is the right view, whether the intelligence 
 is in nature or beyond nature: this subject will be 
 taken up farther on. We are not inquiring whether 
 there is an inherent life in nature, or whether its 
 activity springs from exquisitely nice adaptations made 
 by a power above them. In either case we are com- 
 pelled, if we would account for, if we would get a 
 solution of, what is evident, to maintain that there is 
 mind in nature. Professor Tyndall gives a clear ac- 
 count of the Lucretian way of explaining apparent 
 design : " The interaction of the atoms throughout 
 infinite time rendered all manner of combinations 
 possible. Of these, the fit ones persisted, while the 
 unfit ones disappeared. Not after sage deliberation 
 
28 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 did the atoms station themselves in their right places, 
 nor did they bargain what motions they should assume. 
 From all eternity they have been driven together ; and, 
 after trying motions and unions of every kind, they 
 fell at length into the arrangements out of which this 
 system of things has been formed." Bacon and New- 
 . ton were favorably inclined toward the atomic theory 
 of matter; but then they thought that blind atoms 
 were as capable of working disorderly as orderly, of 
 producing evil as producing good, and in the order 
 and benevolence in the world they saw proofs of an 
 organizing power. " Even that school," says Bacon, 
 " which is most accused of atheism, doth the most 
 demonstrate religion ; that is the school of Leucippus 
 and Democritus and Epicurus. For it is a thousand 
 times more credible that four mutable elements and 
 one immutable fifth essence, duly and eternally placed, 
 need no God, than that an army of infinite small 
 portions or seeds, unplaced, should have produced this 
 order and beauty without a divine marshal." 
 
 But it is said that the fit survive while the unfit 
 perish. We are inclined to discover an ordinance of 
 intelligence and benevolence in the very circumstance 
 that there is a fitness, and that the fit survive. Things 
 might all have been such that there was no fitness in 
 them, and the most unfit might have survived. That 
 things are otherwise, we can explain only by supposing 
 that in the original structure of the atoms there was 
 a fitness to produce fit things, and to secure that they 
 should survive. We hold that'the forms or potencies, 
 one or both, of atoms must originally have been such 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 20) 
 
 as to make them fit for building up the temple. The 
 fit survive because they have the fitness to do so, and 
 are placed in a state of things in which they can sur- 
 vive because of their nature. It is conceivable that 
 things might have been otherwise, that the atoms 
 might have been such as to be incapable of order, 
 and the unfit have survived to work never-ceasing 
 disorder ; and, when sentient beings appeared, to 
 produce only misery. But it is said that in that case 
 the suffering would instantly perish. Yes, as things 
 are now constituted ; but things might have been so 
 constituted that the suffering could not perish, that 
 innocent sufferers must suffer for ever. All those 
 assumptions about the fittest surviving proceed tacitly 
 on the principle that there is an established fitness in 
 things so to do. 
 
 Final cause. On this point Socrates was only ex- 
 pressing what all thinking minds have spontaneously 
 felt from the beginning, that there is evident purpose 
 in the universe ; means and end, — the means being 
 also ends and the ends means to something farther. 
 Aristotle placed the whole subject in a truly philo- 
 sophic position, when he showed that we should seek 
 for four kinds of explanatory causes or principles in 
 nature. We may seek for a material and efficient 
 cause : these are the atoms, and the forces for such 
 there must be — operating in them. But, then, we 
 may also seek for a formal and final cause : in the 
 atoms being made by their forces to assume the 
 shapes which we see in the plant and in the animal, 
 and to conspire to fashion the ear by which we hear. 
 
30 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 and the eye by which we see, and the hand by which 
 we grasp. There is no inconsistency, though narrow 
 minds may be led to believe that there is, between 
 these different kinds of causes. The matter of the 
 universe and the powers of the universe are made to 
 combine and conspire to produce these beautiful laws 
 and types, and accomplish these beneficent ends. 
 The discovery of efficient cause does not set aside 
 final cause. The final cause is in many cases more 
 obvious than the efficient. That the coats, humors, 
 shapes, and nerves of the eye were made to combine 
 to form an image on the retina whereby the percipient 
 sees, is a proof of intention, and this whether physi- 
 ologists are or are not able to discover the processes 
 by which the eye is produced. 
 
 It is a characteristic of the whole school of materi- 
 alists that they speak disparagingly of final cause. 
 And I confess at once that some defenders of natural 
 religion at times speak of God as if he were a mere 
 mechanician, — a sort of higher mechanist, or clock- 
 maker. I farther allow that there are minds which 
 dwell only on curious fitnesses and small providences, 
 and in fact discover in nature purposes which God 
 never intended. We, whose range of vision is so 
 limited, should conduct our inquiries into the intents 
 of an omniscient God, with humility and the pro- 
 foundest reverence. By all means let us notice those 
 nice adaptations and minute providences everywhere 
 forcing themselves on our attention, but let us so 
 widen our vision as to see that these are fittings of a 
 very large machine or organism, in which the ends 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 31 
 
 are means and the means are ends, and in which the 
 particular providences are essential parts of a uni- 
 versal providence which looks to the whole, and makes 
 every~part conspire to the good of the all. 
 
 Hugh Miller, in criticising " The Vestiges of Crea- 
 tion," remarks that there is nothing in the doctrine ! 
 there set forth inconsistent with final cause or the 
 belief in the existence of God, though it seems to be 
 incompatible with the Scripture account of the origin 
 of man. Agassiz and others have shown that there 
 is a plan in the way in which plants and animals have 
 appeared on the earth, and the evidence of this 
 would not be set aside though we should discover that 
 this was produced by natural selection, or some other 
 physical agency. Even though the Darwinian theory 
 should turn out to be true in all its main principles, 
 as it is certainly true in some of its principles, there 
 would still be traces of design everywhere in nature 
 in the manner in which natural agencies have been 
 made to conspire to produce beneficent ends. I am 
 convinced that when the method of God's procedure 
 in producing animated beings is fully unfolded, it 
 will display innumerable traces of the fitness of the 
 time and way in which new species have been intro- 
 duced, whether by natural or supernatural means. 
 But the advocates of this theory, led by Mr. Darwin 
 himself, have, commonly, been speaking contemptu- 
 ously of final cause, and been seeking to efface all the 
 inscriptions on nature which seem to read, " I am a 
 creature of God." Yet in spite of their opposition to 
 teleology, these men are coming face to face with 
 
32 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 striking examples of it. Dr. Tyndall, gives us one of 
 these from Mr. Darwin : " Take the marvellous obser- 
 vation which he cites from Dr. Criiger, where a bucket, 
 with an aperture serving as a spout, is formed in an 
 orchid. Bees visit the flower ; in eager search after 
 material for their combs they push each other into 
 the bucket, the drenched ones escaping from their 
 involuntary bath by the spout. Here they rub their 
 backs against the viscid stigma of the flower, and 
 obtain glue ; then against the pollen masses, which 
 are thus stuck to the back of the bee, and carried 
 away." He then quotes Darwin : " ' When the bee, 
 thus provided, flies to another flower, or to the same 
 flower a second time, and is pushed by its comrades 
 into the bucket, and then crawls out by the passage, 
 the pollen mass upon its back necessarily comes first 
 into contact with the viscid stigma,' which takes up 
 the pollen ; and this is how that orchid is fertilized. 
 Or, take this other case of the Catasetum. l Bees 
 visit these flowers in order to gnaw the labellum ; in 
 doing this they inevitably touch a long, tapering, sen- 
 sitive projection. This, when touched, transmits a 
 sensation of vibration to a certain membrane, which 
 is instantly ruptured, setting free a spring, by which 
 the pollen mass is shot forth like an arrow in the 
 right direction, and adheres, by its viscid extremity, 
 to the back of the bee.' In this way the fertilizing 
 pollen is spread abroad." 
 
 Tyndall tells us that Darwin's books are a " reposi- 
 tory of the most startling facts of this description," 
 as, for instance, his account of the ways in which 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 33 
 
 insects and birds carry the pollen from one plant to 
 another. In due time a Paley will arise to furnish 
 proofs of design from such facts as these. Darwin 
 will supply the facts, and we are just as capable as he \) 
 of perceiving their meaning. He may reject teleology, 
 but his facts are teleological whether he acknowledges 
 it or no. V 
 
 "^Professor Huxley has a good deal of the Arab in his 
 character, and rather delights to have his hand against 
 every man — except those of his own tribe ; but is 
 irritated, I am told, when he finds, in consequence, 
 every man's hand against him. His Bedouin attacks 
 show courage, and make him a favorite with John 
 Bull, who likes openness of speech. There is also, 
 I suspect, some irony in his nature. He must have 
 been in rather a quizzing humor, when he discussed, 
 before a Belfast audience, the Cartesian question, 
 whether the lower animals are mere automata, and 
 urged so many arguments to show that they are, 
 adding that these arguments had not convinced him. 
 My idea of his secret intention in this lecture is, that 
 he means to drive us to some sort of potential life, or 
 pangenesis in all matter. In conducting this discus- 
 sion, he furnishes us with a very beautiful instance 
 of adaptation in the animal frame, an adaptation alto- 
 gether independent of the mind or will of the animal. 
 He takes a frog deprived of senses and of feeling, and 
 he puts it on his hand : " If you incline your hand, 
 doing it very gently and slowly, so that the frog 
 would naturally tend to slip off, you feel the creature's 
 forepaws getting a little on to the edge of your hand 
 

 34 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 until he can just hold himself there, so that he does 
 not fall ; then, if you turn your hand, he mounts up 
 with great care and deliberation, putting one leg in 
 front and then another, till he balances himself with 
 perfect precision upon the edge of your hand ; then, 
 if you turn your hand over, he goes through the oppo- 
 site set of operations, until he comes to sit with per- 
 fect security on the back of your hand. The doing 
 of all this requires a delicacy of co-ordination, and an 
 adjustment of the muscular apparatus of the body, 
 which is only comparable to that of a rope-dancer 
 among ourselves." 
 
 We are glad to have the description of the fact from 
 Mr. Huxley ; and we reckon ourselves quite as enti- 
 tled to judge of its meaning as he is. But they tell 
 us that we are not to look on this wonderful adjust- 
 ment as implying design or a purpose : this is degrad- 
 ing to God, as making him a mere artificer, and is a 
 technic, mechanical, anthropomorphic view. Now, it 
 is always to be borne in mind, that God is represented 
 as saying, " My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither 
 are your ways my ways, saith the Lord." The error 
 of anthropomorphism, of which the school have such 
 a horror, does not consist in supposing that God has 
 qualities like those of man. But it consists in holding 
 that God has no other qualities but those which man 
 has, or in maintaining that these exist in God after the 
 same manner as they do in man, or in attributing to the 
 Divine Being the weaknesses of humanity. We shall 
 have to abnegate our intelligence, if we are not allowed 
 to discover an intelligence in nature as we discover 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 35 
 
 intelligence in human workmanship. We are not 
 degrading God when we ascribe to him the wisdom 
 which we see exhibited in a small way by his creat- 
 ures, provided we make it infinite in extent. We do 
 not impose our qualities on the Divine Being ; but we 
 claim to be formed in his image, and to reflect some- 
 thing of the light of his perfections. 
 
 Laws ci7id Types. This was the grand truth ex- 
 pounded by Plato under the name of Ideas, and car- 
 ried out by Aristotle under the designation of Formal 
 Causes. Every one sees it in the seasons and revolu- 
 tions of the heavenly bodies, in the plant, in the 
 animal, and the human form. All science illustrates 
 it. The laws of physics and chemistry are expressed 
 in numbers implying definite proportions. The guid- 
 ing principle in botany and zoology is type ; that is, 
 regulated structure and model form. The laws of 
 nature, as they are called, are most of them complex, 
 being the result of arrangements with conspiring 
 agencies. This is the case with the seasons, with the 
 elliptic orbits of the planets, with the cycles of the 
 sidereal movements : all are constructions in which 
 various matters and forces combine and co-operate. 
 Possibly all these constructions may carry us back 
 ultimately to the forms and properties of atoms and 
 their collocations ; but in that case there must have 
 been a plan in what has produced such results. / 
 
 A Universal Harmony. The Pythagoreans sought 
 for a music in all nature. The Stoics maintained that 
 the harmony was perfect, and ascribed it to the Fatum, 
 — the word or will of Deity. Modern science establishes 
 
36 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 what was then a mere surmise. Astronomy shows us 
 order and uniformity in the utmost regions of space. 
 Geology exhibits the same laws operating for unnum- 
 bered ages. The spectroscope discovers the same 
 elements in the most distant stars as we have on our 
 earth. The doctrine of the conservation of force lets 
 us see how it is that our world is so stable, while it 
 points not unobscurely to a time when all things will 
 be burned up. 
 
 This harmony appears to the writer of this paper 
 to take two forms. First, there is the adaptation 
 of the properties of one body to those of another, 
 whereby they act and react on each other, atom on 
 atom, molecule on molecule, mass on mass, all to 
 produce harmonious results. Secondly, there is the 
 pre-established harmony propounded by Leibnitz, — a 
 harmony produced not by one body acting on another, 
 but by the original disposition of agents, whereby 
 results are produced which fit into each other. 
 
 Life. The whole school are obliged to confess that 
 they cannot explain every thing by atoms or by any 
 machinery at their disposal. They acknowledge that 
 there is no known law of nature which can brin°- ani- 
 mated beings out of inanimate objects. Dr. Tyndall 
 indeed says : " Those who have occupied themselves 
 with the beautiful experiments of Plateau will remem- 
 ber that, when two spherules of olive oil, suspended 
 in a mixture of alcohol and water of the same density 
 as the oil, are brought together, they do not imme- 
 diately unite. Something like a pellicle appears to be 
 formed around the drops, the rupture of which is im- 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 37 
 
 mediately followed by the coalescence of the globiles 
 into one. There are organisms whose vital actions are 
 almost as purely physical as that of these drops of 
 oil" True, but these drops of oil are after all physical 
 and not organic. Mr. Darwin, to help him out of his 
 difficulties, is obliged to call in more than natural 
 selection. He holds that there is a pangenesis or 
 panzoism in all animated being. Now, what is this 
 but the " life " of the old zoologists whom they so ridi- 
 cule"? It is clear that, after they have made atoms 
 perform all sorts of dances, there still remains a resid- 
 uum which atoms cannot explain ; and it would be 
 wiser in them, before they go on speculating so wildly, 
 to employ years of patient inductive observation and 
 experiment to determine what this — I will not call it 
 life, but — pangenesis is. 
 
 Mr. Darwin is obliged, to account for life, to call 
 in three or four original germs, or at least one germ, 
 created by God. Dr. Tyndall and the younger mem- 
 bers of the school are not satisfied with this com- 
 promise. " The anthropomorphism which it seemed 
 his object to set aside is as firmly associated with 
 the creation of a few forms as with the creation of 
 a multitude." Not satisfied with Darwin, he falls 
 back on Spencer. Mr. Spencer has given us one 
 of the weakest and most'unsatisfactory definitions 
 of life ever propounded : " It is a continuous adjust- 
 ment of internal relations to external relations." Dr. 
 Tyndall says : c< The organism is played upon by the 
 environment, and is modified to meet the require- 
 ments of the environment." The difficulty is dex- 
 
 V 
 
38 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 terously avoided by this loose statement. For the 
 difficulty is to get the organism which is to act on the 
 environment. It is the action of the organism on 
 the environment, the action of a living body on inani- 
 mate matter, that is the thing to be accounted for ; 
 and this is carefully avoided. 
 
 Mind in Man. It is at this point that the theory is 
 felt to be weakest — is seen visibly to break down. 
 There is no appearance of plausibility in the state- 
 ment that atoms can produce sensation, pleasure or 
 pain, sense-perception, memory, judgment, desire, or 
 will. Viewed a priori the two ideas seem to be of an 
 entirely different order, extended matter and thought. 
 Experience furnishes no example of mental affection 
 produced by bodily action. They hint, indeed, and 
 would like to tell us that thought may have existed in 
 the atoms from the very first, if not actually, at least 
 potentially. And then, in carrying out their theory, 
 they are obliged to admit that for millions of millions 
 of years this thought, all along in the atom, did not 
 come forth in any actual thinking. We could believe 
 all this if we had evidence ; but even then we would 
 insist that when, at the end of these countless years, 
 thought came into exercise, it must be by some power 
 calling it forth, and this power must itself be a think- 
 ing power. 
 
 But then it is said that by this theory we are 
 merely exalting matter, and not degrading mind. Dr. 
 Tyndall tells us that he remembers the time when 
 " I regarded my body as a weed." There has been 
 a terrible reaction of opinion since that time. It is 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 39 
 
 possible that the one extreme may be as far from the 
 truth as the other. The Scriptures represent the 
 body and soul as the two essential constituents of 
 man's compound nature. They would have us cherish 
 both, and believe that the two are to be reunited at 
 the resurrection. It is admitted that, in the ordinary 
 state of matter, — the state of air, water, metal, earth, 
 bone, muscle, skull, — it has no capacity of thought or 
 feeling. But then it is supposed that in some refined 
 form — say as nervous structure — it may rise to in- 
 telligence and feeling. He has, however, to allow 
 in his Appendix, " Granted that a definite thought 
 and a definite molecular action in the brain occur 
 simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual 
 organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, 
 which would enable us to pass by a process of reason- 
 ing from the one to the other." He speaks of the 
 chasm between the two classes of phenomena being 
 " intellectually impassable." If this be so, the attempt 
 to resolve mind into matter has no plausibility what- 
 ever. 
 
 When we press the school with the first truths of 
 Aristotle, the intuitive principles of Reid, and Kant's 
 forms of sense, understanding, and reason, they fall 
 back on Herbert Spencer's boasted resolution of them. 
 David Hume and J. S. Mill accounted for these — 
 that is, for our belief in such truths as mathemat- 
 ical axioms, the existence and identity of self, and 
 the universality of cause and effect — by association 
 of ideas. As the author of this work has labored hard 
 to disprove this theory, he is glad to find it abandoned 
 
4<D IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 as utterly unfit to explain the nature of truths claim- 
 ing the necessary consent of all men. Herbert 
 Spencer defends a universal postulate, that we must 
 assume a proposition of which we cannot conceive 
 or think the opposite. (" Principles of Psychology," 
 Chap. XL)* Using this as a test or criterion, he has a 
 whole host of apriori truths which he does not attempt 
 to enumerate or to classify, as mathematical axioms 
 and arithmetical propositions, an objective existence 
 external to consciousness, and an Unknown Reality 
 hidden under all the shapes that present themselves. 
 Indeed, he is threatening, to the astonishment and dis- 
 may of scientists, to find an a priori demonstration of 
 physical laws which are usually supposed to have 
 been discovered by induction.! Mr. Mill accounted 
 for these by associations formed in the experience of 
 the individual ; but Mr. Spencer is lauded because he 
 has constructed a much more comprehensive theory. 
 He calls in the experience of the race, including all 
 our animal forefathers, from the ascidians downwards. 
 " Instead of relatively feeble nervous associations 
 
 * Following Hamilton, who follows Kant and Leibnitz, he makes 
 the primary mark of first truths to be Necessity. I have endeavored 
 to show that it is Self-Evidence. We look on things and the relation 
 of things, and discover them to be so and so. As we do so, we can- 
 not be made to think the opposite ; and this becomes the secondary 
 test, which is Necessity. As all men perceive in the same way, we 
 have a third criterion, Universality This makes ultimate truth to 
 consist, not in the associations of the individual (with Mill), or of the 
 race (with Spencer), or of necessity of conviction (with Leibnitz, Kant, 
 and Hamilton), but in the perception of objects. 
 
 t An able writer, in the " British Quarterly," is greatly perplexing 
 him in regard to this point. 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 4 1 
 
 cLused by repetition in one generation, we have 
 organized nervous connections caused by habit in 
 thousands of generations, — nay probably millions of 
 generations. Space relations have been the same, not 
 only for all ancestral men, all ancestral primates, all 
 ancestral orders of mammalia, but for all simple orders 
 of creatures. These constant space relations are 
 expressed in definite nervous structures, congenitally 
 framed to act in definite ways, and incapable of acting 
 in any other ways. Hence the inconceivableness of 
 the negation of a mathematical axiom, resulting as it 
 does from the impossibility of inverting the actions 
 of the correlative nervous structures, really stands for 
 the infinity of experiences that have developed these 
 structures." (" Psychology," Chap. XI.) I venture to 
 predict that the boasted discovery of Spencer will 
 not run so long a career as the association theory of 
 Hume and Mill ; and that it will be seen in the end 
 to be as incapable of accounting for the phenomenon 
 of all men perceiving certain truths intuitively, and 
 being incapable of thinking the opposite. 
 
 For, observe that the accumulation of the experiences 
 of the individual in Mr. Mill's theory is mental through- 
 out, and is in a sense intelligent, aided by associations 
 in consciousness. Mr. Spencer's experiences consist 
 in the formation of "definite nervous structures." 
 How consciousness and intelligence ever get into 
 these structures he does not tell us, and does not pro- 
 fess to tell us. But " hence the inconceivableness of 
 the negation of a mathematical axiom." This is a 
 fair specimen of his agility in leaping over lacunae 
 
42 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 in reasoning without his calling our attention to them, 
 or even, so far as we can judge, seeing them himself. 
 What a gap between a nervous structure and the in- 
 conceivableness of a falsehood ! I believe Mr. Spencer 
 would allow that the connection is unthinkable. Yet 
 it is by means of these unthinkable bands that he 
 builds his theory. 
 
 I admit the existence of hereditary tendencies. 
 They are very much the result of bodily organization ; 
 such as the aptitude of dogs to point to game or assist 
 the shepherd in guarding his flock, or the disposition 
 in men and women towards certain movements and 
 appetites. They are produced originally by circum- 
 stances, are continued by habit, and fashion the brain 
 structure, which may become hereditary. But these 
 surely are different in their whole nature from those 
 fundamental perceptions and convictions which are in 
 the very structure of our minds, which gaze immediately 
 on things and on truth, and carry with them their own 
 validity ; as that two and two make four, that every 
 effect has a cause, and that there is an essential dis- 
 tinction between good and evil. These are in all men, 
 and in no brutes : can any one bring himself to 
 believe that they are in the primates, or the ancestral 
 orders of mammalia, — not to go back to the ascidians ? 
 In a nascent state they are in infants and savages, and 
 come forth in adults, and can be expressed by edu- 
 cated minds ; but cannot be developed in the souls of 
 lower creatures. They look at truth self-evident, and 
 carry with them a necessity of conviction. I should 
 like to dwell on this topic, as it is the ground on which 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 43 
 
 the whole school fall back. An insecure ground it is at 
 best ; and is known, acknowledged, and felt to be so, 
 — the ultimate foundation of truth is not things per- 
 ceived, but an aggregation of human experiences flow- 
 ing from and determined by a succession of anterior, 
 unintelligent, animal experiences. But I have said 
 enough to counteract the assumption of Dr. Tyndall, 
 that in the end truth rests (the word is a mockery) 
 on the flowing stream of " infinitely numerous expe- 
 riences received during the evolution of life." Spencer 
 has confounded two things which ought to be care- 
 fully separated : a propensity or tendency to feel 
 and act in a particular way, and capable of becoming 
 hereditary, with a principle of reason which has been 
 in man's nature from the beginning, and gazes on and 
 guarantees immutable truth. 
 
 A personal God. This is the result of the separate 
 truths which have passed before us. The traces of ■■ 
 intelligence, of purpose, of order, of harmony, of life, 
 of thought in man, who is conscious of personality, 
 all carry us up to One who is the cause, and who 
 must himself possess the qualities which he has pro- 
 duced. 
 
 Dr. Tyndall does not wish to be called an atheist. 
 In commenting on a resolution passed by the presby- 
 tery of Belfast, he declares that he merely ignores the 
 existence of their God. But what are the nature and^ 
 character of the God retained by him ? It is a God 
 unknown and unknowable, as Tyndall expresses it, — 
 " a power absolutely inscrutable to the intelligence of 
 man." In this style of remark the materialists are led 
 
44 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 by Herbert Spencer, who took advantage of, and fol- 
 lowed out to their consequences, certain rash expres- 
 sions employed by Sir W. Hamilton and Mansel, — 
 the two leading philosophic authorities at the time 
 when this modern Titan was commencing his war 
 against the gods who rule in Olympus. Mr. Spencer 
 condescendingly hands over this unknown land to 
 religion, which, however, has shown no inclination to 
 part with its rich inheritance in possession for a title 
 to a property in the terra incognita. In that Book 
 from which so many take their religion, God is repre- 
 sented as so far unknown, because we are finite and 
 he is infinite, but also so far known because we are 
 formed in his image. " The heavens declare the glory 
 of God." " The earth is full of his praise." Paul 
 did observe in Athens an altar with an inscription to 
 the unknown God ; but he takes advantage of this to 
 say, " Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him 
 declare I unto you." And he declares that the invisi- 
 ble things of God are clearly seen, " being understood 
 (voovjAeva, the strongest word the Greek language can 
 supply) from the things that are made, even his eter- 
 nal power and godhead." The inspired writers every- 
 where encourage us to seek and to know the Lord. 
 What a miserable prospect, to be obliged to look out 
 for ever on this impenetrable darkness, where there 
 may indeed be a power, to which, however, we would 
 feel as little inclination to pray as to a cold mountain 
 or the hard rock. Surely they are " miserable com- 
 forters," who have nothing to say, when they are 
 brought, as they often must be, into the presence of 
 
 • 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 45 
 
 the widow, the fatherless, the motherless, of those 
 suffering from incurable disease, the despairing and 
 the dying, except " There is a mysterious power beyond 
 the visible ; but ye need not look to it, for you cannot 
 know whether it has any love or pity for you." 
 
 I make no inquiry into the personal belief of Dr. 
 Tyndall. But I am entitled to examine and criticise 
 the statements in regard to God which he has so 
 ostentatiously made. We see what he condemns and 
 rejects ; we are not so sure about what he believes. 
 The great body of theists think that they have proof 
 of the existence of a God as the cause of nature, above 
 nature, independent of nature, which He has created 
 and continues to preserve. Our author evidently 
 sets aside this view. He is not willing to allow us 
 a God outside of nature. He is obliged, however, to 
 admit a "formative power, as Fichte would call it, 
 this structural energy ready to come into play and 
 build the ultimate particles of matter into definite 
 shapes " (Appendix). This might seem to make him, 
 like Fichte, a pantheist: but he is not inclined to 
 become fixed down to any religious creed ; and, so far 
 as I can see, retains nothing of pantheism but its 
 sentimentality, to which so many are clinging, — wish- 
 ing to keep alive the flower after they have cut down 
 the tree on which it grew. Whatever this God may/ 
 be, he must be material if all things can be derived 
 from matter. But, in fact, the school is not entitled 
 to say any thing about their God, for he is and must 
 be unknown. 
 
 The question may be put, and is put, What evi- 
 
( 
 
 46 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 dence have we that there is such an unknown power ? 
 On their principles, they have none. They tell you 
 that there is a necessary conviction which requires a 
 belief in something beyond the visible. But the ques- 
 tion arises, May not this necessary belief be accounted 
 for in the way in which Mr. Spencer accounts for 
 other necessary beliefs, by ascribing it to an heredi- 
 tary feeling, gendered by our ever coming to some- 
 thing unknown ? Whatever the fathers of this nescient 
 philosophy may do, from some remaining hereditary 
 feeling handed down from the superstitious age of 
 their ancestors, and not yet obliterated, the children 
 trained by them are marching on in the road which 
 has been opened to them, and affirming that we have 
 no reason whatever for believing in this unknown 
 region, except a subjective feeling which we can ac- 
 count for, and which will disappear in a few genera- 
 tions. This young race of thinkers will farther tell 
 you, and others will agree with them, that this un- 
 knowable God is not worth contending for. 
 
 In order to furnish some sort of satisfaction to 
 themselves when they feel how little they have left, 
 and not to scare others by the emptiness and loneli- 
 ness of the prospect, materialists are ever falling back 
 on some unknown power. But if they know it to be 
 a power } they know something of it : it is not absolutely 
 " inscrutable." "We" ask them how they know it to be 
 power, and we show them that on the same grounds 
 we may know it to be something more, — to be vas'Jy 
 more, to be also intelligence, wisdom, and goodness. 
 Every one who has thought on the subject perceives 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 47 
 
 how large a portion of our knowledge is obtained by 
 the use of the principle of cause and effect. It is a 
 favorite maxim of Aristotle that we can, properly 
 speaking, be said to know things only when we know 
 their causes. How do we reach such a common truth 
 as that the persons walking past us on the street 
 are beings possessed of intelligence and feeling ? It 
 is evident, on the one hand, that we do not by the 
 senses perceive their souls as we perceive their bodies ; 
 and, on the other hand, that we are not immediately 
 conscious of their souls as we are of our own. We 
 are certain that we are surrounded by intelligent men 
 and women, because we see effects which we know 
 from our own experience imply an intelligent cause. 
 It is on a like principle that we argue from the visible 
 effects in the world that there is a power beyond, — 
 a power so far known. But by a like process, that is 
 by the argument from effect, we argue that there must ^ 
 be a benevolence beyond, to account for the benevo- 
 lence we see in nature. 
 
 Prof. Tyndall tells us, in a passage of his first 
 Preface, in which he seems to express genuine feel- 
 ing : " I have noticed, during years of self-observation, 
 that it is not in hours of clearness and vigor that this 
 doctrine (that of material atheism) commends itself 
 to my mind ; that in the presence of stronger and 
 healthier thought it ever dissolves and disappears, as 
 offering no solution of the mystery in which we dwell 
 and of which we form a part." Upon this I have to 
 remark that the younger pupils trained in the school 
 are beginning to say, " We need no solution except the 
 
48 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 solution of hereditary experience ; " and some of them 
 will add, " We do not wish to be troubled in our em- 
 ployments and pleasures by any solution drawn from 
 a world of which we have no evidence, and which is 
 at best a world of darkness." I am also tempted to 
 say that we doubt whether it is by " self-observa- 
 tion " of feelings, which may vary from day to day, 
 and from hour to hour, that we are most likely to 
 get a reasonable and settled conviction. I venture 
 farther to hint that the theoretical opinion which 
 Prof. Tyndall holds, and to which he is seeking to 
 proselytize others, may be fostering these hours of 
 " weakness and doubt " of which he speaks, and hin- 
 dering those times of " stronger and healthier thought " 
 which would lead him to find a " solution of the mys- 
 tery of the world in which we dwell," — not to be found, 
 he acknowledges, in a material atheism, but surely to 
 be found somewhere. 
 
 He believes in a region " outside of science," and 
 admits "the unquenchable claims of the emotional 
 nature." "Physical science 'cannot cover all the de- 
 mands of man's nature." He tells us in the Preface 
 to the seventh edition, " No atheistic reasoning can, I 
 hold, dislodge religion from the heart of man. Logic 
 cannot deprive us of life, and religion is life to the 
 religious. As an experience of consciousness, it is 
 perfectly beyond the assaults of logic." But is there 
 not a risk of this blank system undermining our 
 grander sentiments, by showing that this region out- 
 side of science is a region of darkness ? Our feelings, 
 in order to be permanent, and that they may not be 
 
IDEAS IN NATURE. 49 
 
 killed by the malaria of " weakness and of doubt," 
 must be founded on conviction, and on a conviction 
 which can justify itself. He who removes the ground 
 of the conviction is doing as much as within him lies 
 to undermine and scatter the emotions. Nature can 
 raise within us feelings of awe, sublimity, and love, 
 only so far as it is supposed to be pervaded by intelli- 
 gence and goodness. What are these feelings, what 
 their nature and origin, that we cherish them, or 
 allow them to have any influence over us ? What 
 is this religion placed in the heart of man ? Are 
 they simply the product of atoms that have fortunately 
 combined in a certain way in a time of " stronger and 
 healthier thought," but may separate in an immedi- 
 ately succeeding hour of " weakness and of doubt " ? 
 If they are not, then we have here something which 
 atoms cannot explain, and the whole theory is left 
 in ruins. If they are, then the feelings will be 
 cherished only when the atoms happen to meet and 
 form them, and are in themselves no better than no 
 feelings, or feelings of " weakness and of doubt." 
 True, the tendencies gendered by hereditary training, 
 or by the spirit prevailing around, may continue these 
 nobler feelings for a time after the conviction and 
 belief have gone ; but it will be only for a time, and 
 they will ere long die down into indifference, — just 
 as the glow of the evening sky fades speedily into 
 darkness, after the sun, whose beams produced it, 
 sinks beneath the horizon. I am convinced that the 
 tendency of this empty theory, and its actual in- 
 fluence, so far as it is adopted by the rising genera- 
 
 3 
 
i 
 
 50 IDEAS IN NATURE. 
 
 tion, is to uproot those grander sentiments of awe 
 and of love, which are the most interesting, enliven- 
 insf, and influential elements in our moral and religious 
 nature. Will reverence and confidence, will inspiring 
 hope and fervent affection, continue when men believe 
 only in the interaction of atoms in a closed globe sur- 
 rounded by darkness which may be felt ? But Prof. 
 Tyndall is right when he speaks of " the unquenchable 
 claims of the emotional nature." Our natural and 
 spontaneous feelings will be found stronger in the end 
 than any artificial form of speculative unbelief ; and 
 they will burst forth at times like a fountain, in spite 
 of all the efforts to repress them. But they have 
 such power because the waters are deep down in our 
 nature and constitution, and fed by the sky above and 
 the earth around, penetrated by heaven-descended 
 influences. 
 
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 nings. 4 vols. In a box . . $500 
 Walks from Eden .... 1.50 
 
 The Old Helmet 2.25 
 
 Melbourne House 200 
 
 By her Sister. 
 
 The Star out of Jacob . . $1.50 
 Little Jack's Four Lessons. 0.60 
 Stokies of Vinegar Hill. 6 
 vols 3.00 
 
 Hymns of the Church Mili- 
 tant $ 1 . 5 c 
 
 Ellen Montgomery's Book- 
 shelf. 5 vols 5.0c 
 
 A LAWYER ABROAD. By Henry Day, Esq. 
 
 12 full -page Illustrations. #2.00. 
 
1 1012 01247 9509 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
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