PROFESSOR TYNDALL’S REPUDIATION OF ATHEISM.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 208, 8 February 1875, Page 3

PROFESSOR TYNDALL’S REPUDIATION OF ATHEISM.

(From the Times.) Professor Tyndall has delivered the first of the sixth series of science lectures to the people at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester. The subject was crystalline and molecular forces. Professor Tyndall introduced some beautiful experiments, showing the structural power of molecular forces. At the conclusion.,he said he might have expressed himself too strongly in calling this beautiful experiment astonishing; still he must say that the revelations of science were not in the least degree calculated to lessen our feelings of astonishment. We are surrounded by wonders and mysteries everywhere. Ho had, not sometimes, but often in the springtime, watched the advance of the sprouting leaves, and of the grass, and of the flowers, and observed the general joy of opening life in nature, and he had asked himself the question, could it be that there was no being or thing in nature that knew more about these things than he did ? Did he in bis ignorance represent the highest knowledge of these things existing in this universe? The man who put that question fairly to himself, if he was not a shallow man, if he was a man capable of being penetrated by profound thought, would never answer the question by professing that creed of Atheism which had been so lightly attributed to him. (This statement was received with loud cheers, which were again and again renewed) Everywhere throughout our planet we notice this tendency of the ultimate particles of matter to run into symmetric forms ; the very molecules appeared inspired with a desire for union and growth, and the question of questions at the present time was and it was one he feared would not be solved in our day, but would continue to agitate and occupy thinking minds after we had departed—the question was, how far ■does this wonderful display of molecular force extend ? Does it give us the movement' of the sap of trees 1 He replied with confidence, assuredly it does. Does it give us the beating of our own breasts, the warmth of •our own bodies, the circulation of our blood, and all that thereon depends ? This was a point on which Jhe offered no opinion that night. He had brought them to the edge of the battle-field, into which he did not intend to enter, and from which he had barely escaped, somewhat bespattered and begrimed, but Without much loss of hope. It now only remained for him not to enter this battle-field, but to point out to them the position of the contending hosts. They could pass on by almost imperceptible gradations from this wonderful display of force that he had been able to make manifest to their eyes that night to the lowest forms of vegetable life. They passed from them to other forms higher, and so up to the highest.' He had spoken of contending hosts, and their position was this. One class of thinkers supposed that all the actions of crystals that they had seen formed before them, the passage from the crystalline action to the lo.west forms of vegetable life, and from them to higher forms still foreign to the highest, were the growth of a single natural process. They grasped, as it were, this act of life, this development of life, as an indissolubly connected whole, one great organic growth from the beginning. Others again say that it is not possible to pass from inorganic, as we are pleased to call it, for it was only human language we could use, from the inorganic to the organic without a distinct creative act, and so with regard to the forms that are found in the fossil world. These forms, it was alleged, or considered, also required for their, introduction specially creative acts. There, then, were two perfectly distinct positions, and if they looked

abroad they would find men of equal earnestness and equal intelligence ranging themselves on two opposite sides in relation to this question. Which were right and which were wrong was, he submitted, a question for grave consideration, and not for abuse and hard names. He was afraid that many of the fears which were now entertained on these subjects bad their roots in a kind of scepticism. It is not always those who are charged with scepticism who are the real sceptics, and he confessed it was a matter of some grief to him to see able, useful, and courageous men running to and fro upon the earth, wringing their bands over the threatened destruction of their ideals. He would exhort such men to cast out scepticism, for this fear had its root in scepticism. In the human mind they had the substratum of all ideals, and as surely as string responds to string when the proper note is sounded,, so surely when words of truth and nobleness were uttered by a living human soul would these words have a resonant response in other souls, and in this faith he abided, and in this faith he left the question. Professor Roscoe then expressed the thanks of the meeting to Professor Tyndall for his lecture, and the proceedings terminated.