We have all read in our "Vicar of Wakefield" the famous speech made by the venerable and learned Ephraim Jenkinson to good Dr. Primrose: "The cosmogony, or creation of the world, has puzzled philosophers in all ages. Sanchoniathon, Manetho, Berosus, and Ocellus Lucanus have all attempted it in vain," etc. But we hardly expected to have this question of cosmogony reopened by an eminent scientist in an address to the British Association. What "Sanchoniathon, Manetho, Berosus, and Ocellus Lucanus have all attempted in vain" Professor Tyndall has not only discussed before a body of men learned in the physical sciences, but has done it in such a manner as to rouse two continents to a new interest in the question. One party has immediately accused him of irreligion and infidelity, while another has declared his statements innocent if not virtuous. But the question which has been least debated is, What has the professor really said? or, Has he said anything?

The celebrated sentence which has occasioned this excitement is as follows:— "Abandoning all disguise, the confession that I feel bound to make before you is, that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that matter which we in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and quality of life."

Does he, then, declare himself a materialist? A materialist is one who asserts everything which exists to be matter, or an affection of matter. What, then, is matter, and how is that to be defined? The common definition of matter is, that which is perceived by the senses, or the substance underlying sensible phenomena. By means of the senses we perceive such qualities or phenomena as resistance, form, color, perfume, sound. Whenever we observe these phenomena, whenever we see, hear, taste, touch, or smell, we attribute the affections thus excited to an external substance, which we call matter. But we are aware of other phenomena which are not perceived by the senses,—such as thought, love, and will. We are as certain of their existence as we are of sensible phenomena. I am as sure of the reality of love as I am of the whiteness of chalk. By a law of our mind, whenever we perceive sensible phenomena, we necessarily attribute them to a substance outside of ourselves, which we call matter. And by another law, or the same law, whenever we perceive the phenomena of consciousness, we necessarily attribute them to a substance which we call soul, mind, or spirit. All that we know of matter, and all that we know of soul, is their phenomena, and as these are entirely different, we are obliged to assume that matter and mind are different. None of the qualities or attributes of matter belong to mind, none of those of mind to matter.

Does Tyndall deny this distinction? Apparently not. He not only makes Bishop Butler declare, with unanswerable power, that materialism can never show any connection between molecular processes and the phenomena of consciousness, but he distinctly iterates this in his own person at the end of the address; asserting that there is no fusion possible between the two classes of facts, those of sensation and those of consciousness. Professor Tyndall, then, in the famous sentence above quoted, does not declare himself a materialist in the only sense in which the term has hitherto been used. He does not pretend that sensation, thought, emotion, and will are reducible, in the last analysis, to solidity, extension, divisibility, etc.; he positively and absolutely denies this.

When Tyndall, therefore, asserts that he discerns in matter the promise and potency of every form and quality of life, he uses the word "matter" in a new sense. He does not mean by it the underlying subject of sensible phenomena. It is not the matter which we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. What is it then? It is something beyond the limits of observation and experiment; for he says that in order to discover it we must "prolong the vision backward across the boundary of the experimental evidence." In short, it is something which we know nothing about. It is a conjecture, an opinion, a theoretical matter. In another place he calls this imaginary substance "a cosmical life." This something, which shall be the common basis of the phenomena of sense and soul, not only is not known, but apparently is not knowable. For he assures us that the very attempt to understand this cosmical life which makes the connection between physical and mental phenomena, is "to soar in a vacuum," or "to try to lift one's self by his own waistband."

Of course, then, the contents of the famous sentence are not science. It is not the great scientist, the profound observer of nature, the distinguished experimentalist, who speaks to us in that sentence, but one who is theorizing, as we all have a right to theorize. We also, if we choose, may imagine some "cosmical life" behind both matter and soul, as the common origin of both, and call this life spirit. We shall then be thinking of exactly the same substance that Tyndall is thinking of, only we give it another name. He has merely given another name to the great Being behind all the phenomena of body and soul, out of which or whom all proceed. But to give another name to a fact is not to tell us anything more about it. All meaning having evaporated from the word "matter," the sentence loses its whole significance, and it appears that the alarming declaration asserts nothing at all! In "abandoning all disguise" Tyndall has run little risk, for our analysis shows that he has not asserted anything except, perhaps, this, that there is, in his judgment, some unknown common basis in which matter and mind both inhere. This assertion is not alarming nor dangerous, for it is only what has always been believed.

As there is no materialism, in any known sense of that term, in the doctrine of this address, so likewise there is no atheism. In fact, in this same sentence Tyndall speaks of the "creator" of what he likes to call "matter" or "cosmical life." He objects strongly to a creator who works mechanically, and he seems to reprove Darwin for admitting an original or primordial form, created at first by the Deity. "The anthropomorphism, which it seemed the object of Mr. Darwin to set aside, is as firmly associated with the creation of a few forms as with the creation of a multitude." In another passage he says: "Is there not a temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms that nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods?". But this last sentence shows a singular vacillation in so clear a thinker as Tyndall. How can one close "to some extent" with such a statement as that of Lucretius? Either the gods meddle, or they do not meddle. They can hardly be considered as meddling "to some extent." In still another passage he contrasts the doctrine of evolution with the usual doctrine of creation, rejecting the last in favor of the other, because creation makes of God "an artificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting by broken efforts, as man is seen to act."

All these expressions are somewhat vague, implying, as it seems, a certain obscurity in Tyndall's own thought. But it is not atheism. His "cosmical life" probably is exactly what Cudworth means by "plastic life." It is well known that Cudworth, whose great work is a confutation of all atheism, himself admits what he calls "a plastic nature" in the universe as a subordinate instrument of divine Providence. Just as Tyndall objects to regarding the Deity as "an artificer," Cudworth objects to the "mechanic theists," who make the Deity act directly upon matter from without, by separate efforts, instead of pouring a creative and arranging life into nature. We can easily see that Cudworth, like Tyndall, would object to Darwin's one or two "primordial germs." His "plastic nature" is working everywhere and always, though under a divine guidance. It is "a life," and therefore incorporeal. It is an unconscious life, which acts, not knowingly, but fatally. Man, according to Cudworth, partakes of this life from the life of the universe, just as he partakes of heat and cold from the heat and cold of the universe. Thus Cudworth, believing in some such "cosmical life" as Tyndall imagines, conceives it as being itself the organ and instrument of the Deity. Tyndall, therefore, though less clear in his statements than Cudworth, is not logically involved in atheism by those statements, unless we implicate in the same condemnation the writer whose vast work constitutes the fullest arsenal of weapons against all the forms of atheism.

Unfortunately, however, Tyndall does not come to any clearness on this point, which in one possessing such a lucidity of intellect must be occasioned by his leaving his own domain of science and venturing into this metaphysical world, with which he is not so familiar. His acquaintance with the history of these studies seems not to be extensive. For example, he attributes to Herbert Spencer, as if he were the discoverer, what both Hobbes and Descartes had already stated, that there is no necessary resemblance between our sensations and the external objects from which they are derived. In regard to a belief in God, he tells us that in his weaker moments he loses it, or that it becomes clouded and dim, but that when he is at his best he accepts it most fully. This belief, therefore, is not with Tyndall a matter of conviction, founded on reason, but a question of moods. No wonder, then, that he relegates religion to the region of sentiment, and declares that it has nothing to do with knowledge. It must not touch any question of cosmogony, or, if it does, must "submit to the control of science" in that field. But what has science to do with cosmogony? Science rests on observation of facts; but our professor tells us that he obtains his great cosmological idea of "a cosmical life" by prolonging his vision backward "across the boundary of the experimental evidence." Such science as this, which is based on no experience, and is incapable of verification, has hardly the right to warn religious belief away from any field.

Tyndall seems a little astray in making creation and evolution contradictory and incompatible. Evolution, he tells us, is the manifestation of a power wholly inscrutable to the intellect of man. We know that God is,—that is, we know it in our better moods,—but what God is, we cannot ever know. At all events we must not consider him as a Creator. "Two courses," says Tyndall, "and only two, are possible. Either let us open our doors freely to the conception of creative acts, or, abandoning them, let us radically change our notions of matter." His objections to the idea of a Creator appear to be (1) that it is "derived, not from the study of Nature, but from the observation of men;" and (2) that it represents the Deity "as an artificer, fashioned after a human model, and acting by broken efforts as man is seen to act."

Are these objections sound? When we study man, are we not then also studying Nature? Is not man himself the highest manifestation of Nature? If so, and if we see the quality of any power best in its highest and fullest operations, we can study the nature of God best by looking into our own. We should, in fact, know very little of Nature if we did not look within as well as without. Tyndall justly demands unlimited freedom of investigation in the pursuit of science. But whence came this very idea of freedom except from the human mind? Nothing in the external world is free; all is fatal. Such ideas as cause, force, substance, law, unity, ideality, are not observed in the outward world—they are given by the activity of the mind itself. Subtract these from our thought, and we should know very little of Nature or its origin.

No doubt the idea of a Creator, and of one perfect in wisdom, power, and goodness, is derived by man from his own mind. But it is not necessary that such a Creator should be an "artificer," or proceed by "broken efforts." He may act by evolution, or processes of development. He may create perpetually, by a life flowing from himself into all things. He may create the universe anew at every moment—not as a man lights a torch with a match and then goes away, but as the sun creates his image in the water by a perpetual process. Thus God may be regarded as creating each animal and each plant, while he maintains the mysterious force of development by which it grows from its egg or its seed. The essential idea of creation is an infinite cause, acting according to a perfect intelligence, for a perfect good. There is nothing, necessarily, of an artificer or of broken efforts in this. It is the very idea of divine creation given in the New Testament. "From whom, and through whom, and to whom, are all things." "In him, we live, and move, and have our being." The theist may well accept the view given by Goethe, in his little poem, "Gott, GemÜth, und Welt."

Such a conception of God, as a perpetual Creator, is essential to the intellectual rest of the human mind, and it is painful to see the irresolution of Professor Tyndall in regard to it. "Clear and confident as Jove" in the domain which is his own, where his masterly powers of observation, discrimination, and judgment leave him without a peer, he seems shorn of his strength on entering this field of metaphysics. He has warned theology not to trespass on the grounds of science; or, if she enters them, to submit to science as her superior. Theology has been in the habit of treating science in the same supercilious way; telling her that she was an intruder if she ventured to discuss questions of psychology or religion. This is equally unwise on either part. Theologians should be glad when men of science become seriously interested in these great questions of the Whence and the Whither. The address of Professor Tyndall is excellent in its intention as well as in its candid and manly treatment of the subject. Its indecision and indistinctness are probably due to his having accepted too implicitly the guidance of Spencer, thus assuming that religious truth is unknowable, that creation is impossible, and that only phenomena can become objects of knowledge. "Insoluble mystery" is therefore his final answer to the questions he has himself raised.

Goethe is wiser when he follows the Apostle Paul, and regards the Deity as "the fullness which filleth all in all." There is no unity to thought, and no hope for scientific progress, more than for moral culture, unless we see intelligence at the centre, intelligence on the circumference of being. To place an impenetrable darkness instead of an unclouded light on the throne of the universe, is to throw a shadow over the Creation.

We say that there is no unity in thought without this conviction. The only real unity we know in the world is our own. All we see around us, including our own body, is divisible, subject to alteration and change. Only the ego, or soul, is conscious of a perfect unity in a perpetual identity. Unless we can attribute to the source of all being a similar personal unity, there can be no coherence to science, but it must forever remain fragmentary and divided. This is what we mean by asserting the personality of Deity. This idea reaches what Lord Bacon calls "the vertical point of natural philosophy" or "the summary law of Nature," and constitutes, as he declares, "the union of all things in a perpetual and uniform law."

And unless we can recognize in the ultimate fountain of being an intelligent purpose, the meaning of the universe departs. Without intelligence in the cause there is none in the effect. Then the world has no meaning, life no aim. The universe comes out of darkness, and is plunging into darkness again.

Take away from the domain of knowledge the idea of a creating and presiding intelligence, and there remains no motive for science itself. Professor Tyndall is sagacious enough to see and candid enough to admit that "without moral force to whip it into action the achievements of the intellect would be poor indeed," and that "science itself not unfrequently derives motive power from ultra-scientific sources." Faith in God, as an intelligent creator and ruler of the world, has awakened enthusiasm for scientific investigation among both the Aryan and the Semitic races.

The purest and highest form of monotheism is that of Christianity; and in Christendom has science made its largest progress. Not by martyrs for science, but by martyrs for religion, has the human mind been emancipated. Mr. Tyndall says of scientific freedom, "We fought and won our battle even in the middle ages." But the heroes of intellectual liberty have been the heroes of faith. Hundreds of thousands have died for a religious creed; but how many have died for a scientific theory? Luther went to Worms, and maintained his opinions there in defiance of the anathemas of the church and the ban of the empire, but Galileo denied his most cherished convictions on his knees. Galileo was as noble a character as Luther; but science does not create the texture of soul which makes so many martyrs in all the religious sects of Christendom. Let the doctrine of cosmical force supplant our faith in the Almighty, and in a few hundred years science would probably fade out of the world from pure inanition. The world would probably not care enough for anything to care for science. The light of eternity must fall on this our human and earthly life, to arouse the soul to a living and permanent interest even in things seen and temporal.

Professor Tyndall says: "Whether the views of Lucretius, Darwin, and Spencer are right or wrong, we claim the freedom to discuss them. The ground which they cover is scientific ground."

It is not only a right, but a duty to examine these theories, since they are held seriously and urged earnestly by able men. But we must doubt whether they ought to claim the authority of science. They are proposed by scientific men, and they refer to scientific subjects. But these theories, in their present development, belong to metaphysics rather than to science. Science consists, first, of observation of facts; secondly, of laws inferred from those facts; and thirdly, of a verification of those laws by new observation and experiment. That which cannot be verified is no part of science; astronomy is a science, since every eclipse and occultation verifies its laws; geology is a science, since every new observation of the strata and their contents accords with the established part of the system; chemistry is a science for the same reason. But Darwin's theory of the transformation of species by natural selection is as yet unverified. "There is no evidence of a direct descent of earlier from later species in the geological succession of animals." So says Agassiz, and on this point his testimony can hardly be impeached. Professor W. Thompson, another good geological authority, says: "In successive geological formations, although new species are constantly appearing, and there is abundant evidence of progressive change, no single case has yet been observed of one species passing through a series of inappreciable modifications into another." Neither has any such change taken place within historic times, for the animals and plants found in the tombs of Egypt are "identical, in all respects," says M. Quatrefages, "with those now existing." He adds the opinion, after a very careful and candid examination of the hypothesis of Darwin, that "the theory and the facts do not agree." Not being verified, then, this theory is not yet science, but an unverified mental hypothesis, that is, metaphysics.

It is important that this should be distinctly said, for when men eminent in science propound new theories, these theories themselves are apt to be regarded as science, and those who oppose them are accused of being opposed to science. This is the tendency which Professor Tyndall has so justly described in this very address: "When the human mind has achieved greatness and given evidence of power in any domain, there is a tendency to credit it with similar power in any other domain." Because Tyndall is great in experimental science, many are apt to accept his cosmological conclusions. Because he is a great observer in natural history, his metaphysical theories are supposed to be supported by observation, and to rest on experience. Professor Tyndall's own address terminates, not in science, but nescience. It treats of a realm of atoms and molecules whose existence science has never demonstrated, and attributes to them potencies which science has never verified. It is a system, not made necessary by the stringent constraint of facts, but avowedly constructed in order to avoid the belief in an intelligent Creator, and a universe marked by the presence of design. His theory, he admits, no less than that of Darwin, was not constructed in the pure interests of truth for its own sake. There was another purpose in both,—to get rid of a theology of final causes, of a theology which conceives of God as a human artificer. He wished to exclude religion from the field of cosmogony, and forbid it to intrude on the region of knowledge. Theologians have often been reproached for studying "with a purpose," but it seems that this is a frailty belonging not to theologians only, but to all human beings who care a good deal for what they believe.

Professor Tyndall accepts religious faith as an important element of human nature, but considers it as confined to the sentiments, and as not based in knowledge. He doubtless comes to this conclusion from following too implicitly the traditions of modern English psychology. These assume that knowledge comes only from without, through the senses, and never from within, through intuition. This prepossession, singularly English and insular, is thus stated by John Stuart Mill in his article on Coleridge. "Sensation, and the mind's consciousness of its own acts, are not only the exclusive sources, but the sole materials of our knowledge. There is no knowledge a priori; no truths cognizable by the mind's inward light, and grounded on intuitive evidence." These views have been developed in England by the two Mills, Herbert Spencer, Bain, and others, who have made great efforts to show how sensations may be transformed into thoughts; how association of ideas may have developed instincts; how hereditary impressions, repeated for a million years, may at last have taken on the aspect of necessary truths. In short, they have laid out great labor and ingenuity in proving that a sensation may, very gradually, be transformed into a thought.

But all this labor is probably a waste of time and of intellectual power. The attempt at turning sensation into thought only results in turning thought into sensation. It is an error that we only know what we perceive through the senses, or transform by the action of the mind. It is not true that we only know that of which we can form a sensible image. We know the existence of the soul as certainly as that of the body. We know the infinite and the eternal as well as we know the finite and temporal. We know substance, cause, immortal beauty, absolute truth, as surely as the flitting phenomena which pass within the sphere of sensational experience. These convictions belong, not to the sphere of sentiment and emotion, but to that of knowledge. It is because they show us realities and not imaginations, that they nerve the soul to such vast efforts in the sphere of morals, literature, and religion.

The arguments against the independent existence of the soul which Tyndall puts into the mouth of his Lucretian disciple are not difficult to answer. "You can form no picture of the soul," he says. No; and neither can we form a mental picture of love or hate, of right and wrong, or even of bodily pain and pleasure. "If localized in the body, the soul must have form." Must a pain, localized in the finger, have form? "When a leg is amputated, in which part does the soul reside?" We answer, that the soul resides in the body, with reduced power. Its instrument is less perfect than before—like a telescope which has lost a lens. "If consciousness is an essential attribute of the soul, where is the soul when consciousness ceases by the depression of the brain?" Is there any difficulty, we reply, in supposing that the soul may pass sometimes into a state of torpor, when its instrument is injured? A soul may sleep, and so be unconscious, without being dead. "The diseased brain may produce immorality: can the reason control it? If not, what is the use of the reason?" To this we answer that the soul may lose its power with a diseased body; but when furnished with another and better body, it will regain it. "If you regard the body only as an instrument, you will neglect to take care of it." Does the astronomer neglect to take care of his telescope?

These answers to the Lucretian may be far from complete; but they are at least as good as the objections. The soul, no doubt, depends on the body, and cannot do its work well when the body is out of order; but does that prove it to be the result of the body? If so, the same argument would prove the carpenter to be the result of his box of tools, and the organist to be the result of his organ. The organist draws sweet music from his instrument. But as his organ grows old, or is injured by the weather, or the pipes crack, and the pedals get out of order, the music becomes more and more imperfect. At last the instrument is wholly ruined, and the music wholly ceases. Is, then, the organist dead, or was he only the result of the organ? "Without phosphorus, no thought," say the materialists. True. So, "without the organ, no music." Just as in addition to the musical instrument we need a performer, so in addition to the brain we need a soul.

There are two worlds of knowledge,—the outward world, which is perceived through the senses, and which belongs to physical science, and the inward world, perceived by the nobler reason, and from which a celestial light streams in, irradiating the mind through all its powers. Religion and science are not opposed, though different; their spheres are different, though not to be divided. Each is supreme in its own region, but each needs the help of the other in order to do its own work well. Professor Tyndall claims freedom of discussion and inquiry for himself and his scientific brethren, and says he will oppose to the death any limitation of this liberty. He need not be anxious on this point. Religious faith has already fought this battle, and won for science as well as for itself perfect liberty of thought. The Protestant churches may say, "With a great sum obtained we this freedom." By the lives of its confessors and the blood of its martyrs has it secured for all men to-day equal rights of thought and speech. What neither Copernicus, Kepler, nor Galileo could do was accomplished by the courage of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and Oliver Cromwell.

And now the freedom they obtained by such sacrifices we inherit and enjoy: "We are free-born." We may be thankful that in most countries to-day no repression nor dictation prevents any man from expressing his inmost thought. We are glad that the most rabid unbelief and extreme denial can be spoken calmly in the open day. This is one great discovery of modern times, that errors lose half their influence when openly uttered. We owe this discovery to the Reformation. The reformers made possible a toleration much larger than their own; unwittingly, while seeking freedom for their own thoughts, they won the same freedom for others, who went farther than they. They builded better than they knew.

Professor Tyndall's address is tranquil yet earnest, modest, and manly. But its best result is, that it shows us the impotence of the method of sensation to explain the mystery of the universe. It has shown us clearly the limitations of "the understanding judging by sense"—shown that it sees our world clearly, but is blind to the other. It can tell every blade of grass, and name every mineral; but it stands helpless and hopeless before the problem of being. Science and religion may each say with the apostle, "We know in part and prophesy in part." Together and united, they may one day see and know the whole.