Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/441

Rh of science breaking in upon the minds of the youth of Ireland, and strengthening gradually to the perfect day, as a surer check to any intellectual or spiritual tyranny which might threaten this island than the laws of princes or the swords of emperors. Where is the cause of fear? We fought and won our battle even in the middle ages; why should we doubt the issue of a conflict now?"

This passage also was deemed unnecessarily warm, and I therefore omitted it. It was an act of weakness on my part to do so. For, considering the aims and acts of that renowned and remorseless organization which for the time being wields the entire power of my critic's Church, not only resistance to its further progress, but, were it not for the intelligence of Roman Catholic laymen, positive restriction of its present power for evil, might well become the necessary attitude of society as regards that organization. With some slight verbal alterations, therefore, which do not impair its strength, the passage has been restored.

My critic is very hard upon the avowal in my preface regarding atheism. But I frankly confess that his honest hardness and hostility are to me preferable to the milder but less honest treatment which the passage has received from members of other churches. He quotes the paragraph, and goes on to say: "We repeat this is a most remarkable passage. Much as we dislike seasoning polemics with strong words, we assert that this apology only tends to affix with links of steel to the name of Prof. Tyndall the dread imputation against which he struggles."

Here we have a very fair example of subjective religious vigor. But my quarrel with such exhibitions is that they do not always represent objective fact. No atheistic reasoning can, I hold, dislodge religion from the heart of man. Logic cannot deprive us of life, and religion is life to the religious. As an experience of consciousness, it is perfectly beyond the assaults of logic. But the religious life is often projected in external forms—I use the word in its widest sense—by no means beyond the reach of logic, which will have to bear—and to do so more and more as the world becomes more enlightened—comparison with facts. The subjective energy to which I have just referred is also a fact of consciousness not to be reasoned away. My critic feels, and takes delight in feeling, that I am struggling, and he obviously experiences the most exquisite pleasures of "the muscular sense" in holding me down. His feelings are as real as if his imagination of what mine are were equally real. His picture of my "struggles" is, however, a mere phantasm. I do not struggle. I do not fear the charge of atheism; nor should I even disavow it, in reference to any definition of the Supreme which he, or his order, would be likely to frame. His "links" and his "steel" and his "dread imputations" are, therefore, even more unsubstantial than my "streaks of morning cloud," and they may be permitted to vanish together.