Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1875-06-08
PROF. TYNDALL AND HIS
CRITICS.

Probably no discussion of modern
times has excited more attention and in
terest, and elected more earnest crltl-
cism than the inaugural address deliver
ed on the 10Th of August last at the
opening of the British Association at
Belfast, Ireland, by Prof. Tyndall.
When Prof. Tyndall was in this country
a few months previously, giving his
courses of brilliant and popular lectures
on Science, he was not seldom reminded
by the special guardians of religious and
theological faith, that the sphere and
method of science had nothing to do
with religion, and he would do well to
keep within the limits of his own sphere.
The address was his answer, and not
few religious as well as secular journals
on both sides of the Atlantic, assumed
to pronounce the address rash, impolitic,
and revolutionary. Even the N. 7.
Tribune affected to treat it as mistake
which was unnecessary and to be re-
GREETED. Why the Tribune should thus
speak in favor of quietness and nom
agitation, if not of reaction, can only be
explained by conjecture. Other jour
nails were more liberal, and, while criti-
cising, all have been obliged to concede
superlative merit in the address.
1t is significant not for any new views
advanced, for its views are only old
ones revised and restated with the
combinations and new illustra-
tions of scientific research, but it's sig
nifcance consists in that very wisdom
which brought it forth on the occasion
its appropriateness to the time as an in
dex of the state and tendency of thought
among scientific men.
Prof. Tyndall does not seek, as has
been uniustly charged or insinuated, to
dispel God and religion from man. On
the other hand he manifests most pro-
found and intelligent regard for "the
deep-set feeling" ''the immovable basis
of the religious sentiment in the emo
tional nature of man." He makes an
effort to state the facts of his case, the
simple truth as it appears to him, and to
other men of science, without any theo-
logical bias or prejudice-in favor of
fictitious theory. AS true man and
scientific inquirer he could do no less,
and would have been presuming to have
done more. TO censure him for what
he has done, or to fear the effect of any
truth he has uttered, is to confess our
selves the enemies of progress and light.
"To yield the religious sentiment rea-
sonable satisfaction" is, in Prof. Tyn-
dall's estimation, "the problem of prob
lens of the present hour" cit is vain,"
he says, ''to oppose this force with
view to its extirpation. What we should
oppose, TO the death, if necessary, is
every attempt to found upon this ele-
mental bias of mans nature system
which should exercise despotic sway
over his intellect"
The impregnable position of science
he regards as this-that call religious
theories, schemes and systems which
embrace notions of cCsmOgony, or
which otherwise reach into this do
main, must, in so far as they do this,
submit to the control of science, and re-
lipGuish all thought of controlling it.
Acting otherwise proved disastrous in
the past, and it is simply fatuous to-
day"
That he is strictly correct in this
statement, and that all pretensions in
behalf of religion which assume to set
at defiance or to override the necessary
facts of science, must them selves be set
aside, it needs but a casual reference to
the history and progress of ideas within
the present century to see as the ineyita-
BILE issue.
The main charges made against Prof.
Tyndall's address are two: That his
treatment of matter is materiallstic and
his view of religion an empty emotion.
1t is true that he elucidates the new doc
trine of science in regard to matter, to
wit: that matter is not passive and
dead, acted upon only by an extran-
eous force but is alive, active, preg-
nant with force, energy, and intel
ligence, that the chain of life runs back
indefinitely from the most complex or
CARNATIONS, ANIMALS and plants, to the
most simple, to mere globules and molo-
cules, which, in their appropriate con-
ditions or environment, exhibit the
functions of life. So he says, SPY an
intellectual necessity cross the bound
airy of experimental evidence and dis
Germ in the matter which we, in our ig-
norance of its latent powers
have hitherto covered with opprobrium,
the promise and potency Of all terrestrial
life"
But two courses seem open to US, Ell
ther to regard every living form of mat
ter as specially created, or to consider
that the forms which we see are all de-
rived, generated, so to speak, one from
another, aud each from a pre-existing
form in an infinite chain of succession
and development, as ii were, from the
most simple aud undiferentlated atoms,
which modern science has proved to be
pregnant with life generating force.
We must admit that to the common
casual apprehension the theory of me-
chanical creation appears most plausible
and satisfactory, as men do not see the
unbroken chain of development, do not
at once comprehend the long and imper-
ceptible process of evolution, while the
mechanical view COMFORTS with their
brief experience and consciousness of
creative power, as well as with the
common doctrines of theological educa-
ton. AS it was an incidental illusion
that the earth was fiat and the sun re-
volving body, so it is incidental to the
evolution of true knowledge that men
should at first hold the earth to be me.
chanical creation, made complete at
once, according to a pre-contrived plan
or scheme, and all the orders of existing
plants, animals, minerals and living
forms on the earth's surfaca ,nada In