Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/519

Rh evidence," and adequate to explain the physical origin of the universe; while Prof. Clerk Maxwell, according to Dr. McCosh, "discovers, in the very nature and properties of a molecule, a proof of design," thus making the atomic theory a help to religion by furnishing evidence of the existence of God.

It is a noteworthy circumstance, as showing the growth of a better state of mind, that the writers we are considering agree in abstaining from the charge of materialism, which has been so freely indulged in by others against Prof. Tyndall. They know that it cannot be maintained; but, while refraining from the imputation of "gross materialism," it is still implied that he must be some sort of a materialist. The writer in the Penn Monthly expressly acquits him of the charge as usually construed, by saying, "Prof. Tyndall is not a materialist of the school of De la Mettre and Holbach." He then puts the question, "In what sense, then, is Prof. Tyndall a materialist, if he be one at all?" and replies: "In the sense of being a naturalist;" and this term is again used in a vague and unusual sense. But it were better to have allowed Prof. Tyndall to explain his own position, which he has done in the most explicit manner. It is now generally understood, as the writer just quoted implies, that the term "materialism" is used with different significations, and Prof. Tyndall has qualified the form of it which he maintains as "scientific materialism." This consists simply in ascribing higher powers and possibilities to matter than hitherto, and not in sinking mind in matter, or in asserting the materiality of mind in the name of scientific authority. In an address, delivered before the mathematical and physical section of the British Association held in Norwich, in 1868, Professor Tyndall took exactly the same ground that he assumed last August at Belfast; and passages from the discourse were widely quoted at the time as containing the most decisive disavowal and disproof of materialism in its usually accepted sense. Our reviewers should have reproduced the following portion; and, as they have not, we supply the omission:

"In affirming that the growth of the body