"It is impossible", he says, "to understand either the beginning or the continuance of life, without an overruling creative power; and therefore, no conclusions of dynamical science regarding the future condition of the earth can be held to give dispiriting views as to the destiny of the race of intelligent beings by which it is at present inhabited.” 1

In the same paper he says that living beings could not have come into existence spontaneously from inorganic matter.

"I need scarcely say", he writes, "that the beginning and maintenance of life on the earth is absolutely and infinitely beyond the range of all sound speculation in dynamical science. The only contribution of dynamics to theoretical biology is absolute negation of automatic commencement or automatic maintenance of life." 2

In the year 1871 when Darwinism still occupied the fore-ground in scientific discussions, and the question. of the origin of life held the minds of all in suspense Lord Kelvin had occasion to express his opinions on this subject before a meeting of the British Association in Edinburgh. Of evolution within the world of organisms, he knows nothing at first hand, but that system of evolution which takes its name from Darwin, he declares to be unsatisfactory.

"Darwin", he says, "concludes his great work on the Origin of Species with the following words: 'It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling

1 On the Age of the Sun's Heat. Popular Lectures and Discourses I 198.

2 Ib. 314.

through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and depending on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.'

There is grandeur in this view of life with its several powers having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved. With the feeling expressed in these two sentences I most cordially sympathise. I have omitted two sentences which come between them, describing briefly the hypothesis of 'the Origin of Species by Natural Selection', because I have always felt that this hypothesis does not contain the true theory of evolution, if evolution there has been, in biology. Sir John Herschel . . . objected to the doctrine of natural selection that it was too like the Laputan method of making books, and that it did not sufficiently take into account a continually guiding and controlling intelligence. This seems to me a most valuable and instructive criticism. I feel profoundly convinced that the argument of design has been greatly too much lost sight of in recent zoological speculations. Reactions against the frivolities of teleology, such as are to be found not rarely in the notes of the learned commentators on Paley's Natural Theology, have, I believe, a temporary effect in turning attention from the solid and irrefragable argument so well put forward in that excellent old book. But overpoweringly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie all round us; and if ever perplexities, whether metaphysical or scientific, turn us away from them for a time, they come back upon us with irresistible force, showing to us through Nature the influence of a free will, and teaching us that living beings depend on one ever-acting Creator and Ruler." 1

1 Report of the Forty-First Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held at Edinburgh in August 1871: Address by the President Sir William Thomson, London 1872, CV.

One must refer to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels to find out how books are made in Laputa. The trend of "that excellent old book" Paley's Natural Theology can however be gathered from its second and more detailed title, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity 1.

More recently, in the beginning of May 1903, Lord Kelvin emphatically voiced his opinions on the theme "Science and Religion".

"The Times" contain the following report of his speech 2:

"In connection with University College Christian Association the first of a course of lectures on 'Christian Apologetics' was delivered last Friday, in the botanical theatre at University College. Lord Reay, President of University College, occupied the Chair, and the large theatre was filled to over-flowing, many visitors being unable to find seats.

The Rev. Professor G. Henslow, who was the lecturer, spoke on the subject of 'Present-day Rationalism, an Examination of Darwinism."

Lord Kelvin in moving a vote of thanks to the lecturer, said he wished to make a personal explanation. He had recently had occasion to make use of the expressions ether, atoms, electricity, and had been horrified to read in the press that he had spoken of ether-atoms. Ether was absolutely non-atomic; it was absolutely structureless and homogeneous. He was in thorough sympathy with Professor Henslow in the fundamentals of his lecture, but he

1 Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, London 1802 and subsequent editions. Between 1836 and 1839, Lord Brougham and Sir Charles Bell were occupied in publishing an annotated edition.

2 The Times. Weekly edition. Vol. XXVII, Nr. 1375, London, May 8th 1903, Supplement III.

could not say that with regard to the origin of life science neither affirmed nor denied creative power. Science positively affirmed creative power. Science made everyone feel a miracle in himself. It was not in dead matter that they lived and moved and had their being, but in the creating and directive power which science compelled them to accept as an article of belief. They could not escape from that when they studied the physics and dynamics of living and dead matter all around. Modern biologists were coming once more to a firm acceptance of something, and that was a vital principle. They had an unknown object put before them in science. In thinking of that subject they were all agnostics. They only knew God in His works, but they were absolutely forced by science to admit and to believe with absolute confidence in a directive power in an influence other than physical, dynamical, electrical forces. Cicero had denied that they could have come into existence by a fortuitous concourse of atoms. There was nothing between absolute scientific belief in creative power, and the acceptance of the theory of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. Was there, he asked, anything so absurd as to believe that a number of atoms by falling together of their own accord could make a crystal, a sprig of moss, a microbe, a living animal? People thought that given millions of years, these might come to pass, but they could not think that a million of millions of millions of years could give them unaided a beautiful world like ours. They had a spiritual influence, and in science a knowledge that there was that influence, in the world around them. He admired the healthy, breezy atmosphere of free thought in Professor Henslow's Lecture. Let no one, he urged, be afraid of true freedom. They could be free in their thought, in their criticisms, and with freedom of thought they were bound to come to the conclusion that science was not antagonistic to religion, but a help for religion."

In a letter to the "Times" two days later Lord Kelvin made certain corrections touching upon the differences between the possible origin of crystals and that of living organisms.

"I desired to point out that while 'fortuitous concourse of atoms' is not an inappropriate description of the formation of a crystal, it is utterly absurd in respect to the coming into existence, or the growth, or the continuation of the molecular combinations presented in the bodies of living things. Here scientific thought is compelled to accept the idea of creative power. Forty years ago I asked Liebig, walking somewhere in the country, if he believed that the grass and flowers which we saw around us grew by mere chemical forces. He answered, 'No, no more than I believe that a book of botany describing them could grow by mere chemical forces'. Every action of human free will is a miracle to physical and chemical and mathematical science."

In printing, in the "Nineteenth Century" for June 1903, his own version of his speech, Lord Kelvin concludes with the exhortation:

"Do not be afraid of being free thinkers! If you think strongly enough, you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all religion. You will find science not antagonistic but helpful to religion." 1

Lord Kelvin's utterances brought down on him a crowd of objections; most of them however were composed in the heat of anger and are beside the point in question 2.

As Haeckel appeals to Helmholtz († 1894), a passage from a letter of the latter may fitly be quoted.

"We Mathematical Scientists", writes Helmholtz to his father, "are disciplined to the most anxious precision in the

Reprinted from the Nineteenth Century in The American Catholic Quarterly Review XXVIII, Philadelphia 1903, 603. Cf. Stimmen aus Maria-Laach LXV 487.

2 The objections and answers are printed in the Weekly Edition of the Times from the 8th to the 15th May (Supp. 111). Cf. A Review ib. 15th May p. 313. "The importance of Lord Kelvin's opinion", concludes the latter article, "is rather enhanced than diminished by the hostile irrelevancy which some of his critics have displayed."