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hitherto been, mere logomachies. As long as certain physicists choose to remain on the low naturalistic level which they have so persistently occupied in the past, we must say to them that any rational notion of the very existence of a purely intellectual and supernatural order of things, must from the nature of the case remain, for them, a sheer impossibility. Controversy, under such conditions, is little else than wildly beating the air. I acknowledge with all due respect the high value of the definite formal teachings by men of science, who by their labours and achievements within their own line of study have proved themselves entitled to confidence. I am willing to use what powers and opportunities I possess to learn from them what they have to teach of new and true. But the opinions of these men outside their own sphere have no special value. That some distinguished physicists should show deep and bitter hostility to what all Christians regard as most sacred, is as deplorable as it is astonishing. But it would not be candid on my part to suppress the strong conviction I have long entertained, that many leaders in physical science who are manifestly, whether they know it or not, the ardent devotees of principles which necessarily lead to mere naturalistic atheism, have been more or less driven into this strange frame of mind by the pseudo-theology which for so many centuries to the present hour has usurped the name and place of Christian truth. I do not hesitate to assert that the clergy and other religious teachers have much to answer for in this respect.

PRESIDENT NOAH PORTER'S REPLY.

I BEG leave to express my thanks to the gentlemen who have commented so kindly upon my critique of Professor Tyndall's address at Birmingham, and to ask their attention to a brief explanation of what I did, and what I did not, propose to accomplish in writing it.

I did not propose to discuss any matter which was not furnished by the discourse itself, least of all to write an exhaustive disquisition upon the Professor's philosophical or theological theories, or the mischievous tendencies of either, but to confine myself to the positions taken in the discourse itself, and to subject its statements of fact, its suggested analogies, and its logic to a close, though courteous criticism. The methods of reaching the truths of physical science ought by this time to be capable of definite statement, and of decisive application to the important questions which are at present so earnestly discussed. Professor Tyndall has himself given to these methods special

and earnest attention, and he would be the last man to complain when his own logic and inferences are tested by them.

It seems to me also that argument and criticism should be more largely used than they have been by Christian theologians and philosophers in their well-meant and much-needed efforts to arrest the progress of the Atheistic ways of thinking, which at the present day are at once so plausible and so superficial, so arrogant and yet so unscientific. I am confident that in my own country, the most effectual method to oppose these tendencies is to subject them to a candid, yet thorough scrutiny, to concede every position and somewhat more than a truly scientific thinker would venture to maintain to assert, and to expose every failure of experiment or logic with a fearless spirit. Simple protestations or denunciations, however earnest and fervent, will avail little against those solid squares of self-complacent agnosticism and denial, into which so many teachers of science have succeeded in gathering their disciples. But sharp and penetrating arguments are powerful agents when uttered in a candid and truth-loving spirit.

I think we have some advantage in this country, in that to a considerable extent thus far our higher institutions of education and research have recognised the scientific study of nature as a means of culture equally important with the study of the humanities, and have aimed to train their pupils in both directions after the methods which are appropriate to each. Theologians and scientists are for this reason forced to consort with one another on an equal footing, and often in familiar relationships, except so far as new theories and methods of education have separated them by the establishment of special schools and colleges that are limited to mathematical and physical culture. Notwithstanding these advantages, we are beginning to experience serious evils from strong tendencies to intellectual separation and alienation on the part of both theologians and scientists. So long as both parties are forced to plead the cause of truth, whether it be theological or scientific, at a common tribunal, so long shall we be able to teach and to learn from one another.

I take great pleasure in saying that Professor Tyndall is a personal friend whom I have had the pleasure of meeting as the guest of our college, and that he has acknowledged in a most cordial manner the courtesy as well as the severity of my criticisms. While as a scientist, in some of his moods, he moves me to wonder, as a poet and a man he seems to me not infrequently to utter the sentiments of one who ought not to be far from the kingdom of God. The pupil who could so beautifully describe, and so fervently respond to the child-like prayer of his great master Faraday has the stuff in him into which may yet be kindled a rational and fervent faith upon the altar and within the sanctuary of true science.

APPENDIX.

THE New York World, of December 4th, 1878, in a leading article upon President Porter's paper, makes the following remarks [ED.]:

"A little more than a year ago Professor Tyndall delivered an address before the Birmingham and Midland Institute, of which he was president, and in it—according to his custom of conveying to his audiences not only facts, but the deductions therefrom which seem to him legitimate--he presented the conclusions to which he had been led through his study of nature. To this address Dr. Noah Porter, the distinguished president of Yale College, replied on Monday last in the Victoria Institute, in London, in a paper which will be found elsewhere in to-day's World. Dr. Porter touches the most sensitive part of scientific men who speak beyond absolute knowledge, and in doing so lashes over the Professor's shoulders many a writer who sees in matter promises and potencies as fair as those of which Mr. Tyndall caught an apocalyptic vision in his celebrated Belfast address. From the doctrine of the correlation of the physical forces, Professor Tyndall had deduced the conclusion that the order and energy of the universe were inherent, and not imposed from without-' the expression of fixed law, and not of arbitrary will'-so that all which exists, whether spiritual, mental, moral, or material, is subject simply to mechanical laws. The human body, according to the views of Professor Tyndall, is a mere machine, and therefore cannot generate force. This position is opposed by Dr. Porter, on the ground that within the human body the nerves perform work additional to any that is implied in either the generation or transformation of force, and that that work is seen in their additional function of directing force to the accomplishment of certain ends. In other words, he brings his argument to bear directly on the question whether, when the human body is considered as an entirety, something is not found acting within it in a way which shows that it is not simply a machine, but a living body, some of whose functions must lead us to believe that it is in part governed by something which is not matter, nor belongs in the category of the correlated forces, nor is a resultant of them all or of any of them-in short, whether mind and matter do not exist as separate entities, and the former does not act upon the latter within the compages of our flesh. Besides this, if, as Professor Tyndall is fond of insisting, strict science is now impossible unless the relations between phenomena can be expressed quantitatively and in numbers, he who holds that the body is simply a machine is bound to show that its laws can be expressed and formulated mathematically a position which no physiologist now dreams of attempting to maintain, since, as Du Bois Raymond said six

years ago, we are still hopelessly in the dark' in regard to many if not most physiological processes.

"The points thus made against Professor Tyndall are, therefore, that by his own definition of science there is no science of the intricate workings within the body, and that he has drawn conclusions in regard to man which are not justified by the present state of our knowledge. By failing to take into consideration the undoubted power of directing force which resides in the nerves, he has also avoided the really difficult and much disputed question concerning which materialists are at variance with men who hold that the capability of directing the muscles to certain ends, which is so obvious in man, does not reside in the matter of which the muscles are made, or that the nerves are mere 'valve openers' to supply the muscles with force. The statement that emotions like fear and terror are caused simply by the physical impact of light coming from fearful objects upon the retina, is, in Dr. Porter's view, but an assumption, and in joining issue with Professor Tyndall, he holds-justly as it seems to us-that emotions arise not from external objects, but from the mind of the man who contemplates them. Still further, the mind may contemplate itself within its own order, and must therefore be conceived of as existing as really as anything, the image of which can impress it through the eyes.

"Men of science are certainly not to have the whole round of man inclosed within the boundaries of physics and physiology without bold opposition on the part of people who believe that metaphysics are not sheer moonshine, and outside of metaphysics they have of late received severe blows from men who fight merely with the weapons afforded them by logic. Whatever may be thought of the ultimate merits of the case on 'other grounds than those of logic, it seems that at present Professor Tyndall has decidedly. the worst of the argument."

ORDINARY MEETING, JANUARY 6, 1879.

THE REV. R. THORNTON, D.D., VICE-PRESIDENT, IN THE

CHAIR.

The minutes of the last meeting were read and confirmed, and the following elections were announced:

MEMBERS:-Rev. Mark W. Bird, Haiti; E. J. Statham, Esq., C.E., A.I.C.E., New South Wales.

ASSOCIATES :-Rev. W. Guest, F.G.S., Kent; Rev. C. O. Mules, M.A., New Zealand.

Also the presentation of the following works for the Library "Proceedings of the Royal Society."

"London Quarterly for 1878."

"Experience and Revelation." By J. Coutts, Esq.

From the same.

A. McArthur, Esq., M.P.

From the Author.

The following paper was then read by Mr. T. Karr Callard, F.G.S., the author being unavoidably absent.

THE LAPSE OF TIME SINCE THE GLACIAL EPOCH DETERMINED BY THE DATE OF THE POLISHED STONE AGE. By J. C. SOUTHALL, ESQ. A.M., LL.D., (Richmond, Virginia, U.S.A.).

T

HERE have been various announcements within the past ten years of the discovery of traces of man in the miocene, pliocene, and glacial strata. The Abbé Bourgeois still contends that he has found worked flints in a bed of miocene date at Thenay; M. Delaunay thought he had discovered, in 1869, traces of the hand of man in certain markings or cuttings on a rib of the Halitherium fossile, a well-known miocene species; M. Desnoyers announced the discovery of similarly notched bones, belonging to the Elephas meridionalis, Rhinoceros leptorhinus, and other extinct animals in a pliocene bed at St. Prest; Professor Ramorino made a similar announcement with regard to some bones from the pliocene strata of the Val d' Arno; a human fibula, as was stated by Professor Boyd Dawkins, was found some years since under glacial clay in the Victoria cave, in Yorkshire; three or four sharpened sticks, alleged to have been pointed by human tools, were found yet more recently in an inter-glacial bed in Switzerland; besides other instances which it is not necessary to enumerate. It is generally conceded now that most of

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