ART. VI.-MR. TYNDALL AND CONTEMPORARY

THOUGHT.

Fragments of Science. By JOHN TYNDALL, F.R.S. Fifth Edition. London: Longmans. 1876.

Goethe. Sämmtliche Werke. Berlin: 1873.

The Logic of Hegel. By WILLIAM WALLACE.

W

Oxford: 1874.

S. Thomæ Aquinatis Summa contra Gentiles. Parisiis: 1853. HEN Mr. Tyndall spoke out at Belfast, he was somewhat in the position of a prime minister, or a new chief of the executive, who is detailing to the country at large the course of events which have precipitated a crisis. He was glorifying victories that might be symbolized by fresh laurel, and, as conquerors are wont, stinted not his promises of yet further achievement. His freedom from reticence, his evident belief in what he was saying, and his cry of exultation over the broken and discomfited enemy of science, though hardly in accord with the prevailing spirit of irony, could not but trouble the many who hold a little more than he does, and prefer to commit themselves a little less. They do not mistake in thinking Mr. Tyndall's address a token and sign of the times. It is an indication of two grave revolutions in thought which are proceeding with accelerated motion,-the revolution by which English society has submitted to a German education on the principles of Pure Reason, and the revolution by which Oriental creeds are making a home for themselves in this highlycivilized, and, as it used to seem, Christian island. These movements it is possible to distinguish, but they never have been separate. Mr. Tyndall is a distinguished pioneer of both. As we think it desirable to speak of his recent volume, the embodiment or literary exposition of his thoughts, we will pass in review some of the particulars which make it important; and in doing so will suggest a method of criticism which may help, not only to understand Mr. Tyndall's drift, but to meet the perplexities of reading in our time. Then it will be our endeavour to represent Mr. Tyndall's doctrine in its proper unity; and finally, to prove that he has closed with an erroneous philosophy of religion. We need not add that the Catholic philosophy, mainly as put forward in S. Thomas, will supply our answer to Professor Tyndall's difficulties.

I. The merits and demerits of the nineteenth century have long been under discussion. It might seem hardly of service to the world in general to discuss them any more. But our present undertaking will, perhaps, be not wholly a failure, if we indicate some circumstances which, whilst admitting of a various criticism to be passed upon them, are elements that should determine many a controversy now going on. Where everything cannot be said, it is a matter of consequence to know what ought to be said. The rest, useful and effective at other seasons, can only embarrass our exposition. For from the first, but now above all, truth is better served by clear distinctness of outline than by any disguise, howsoever artistic, of irrelevant surroundings. Questions mooted in an age like our own are thought to be novel. They take an appearance of quite absorbing interest, as though their significance and possible issues had never occurred to less-experienced generations. We count this a mistake. It will be some part of our endeavour to draw the attention of readers-especially of such as are learned chiefly in the modern-to the knowledge possessed by ancient and even scholastic authorities in problems which are new to the look because they have rested in long oblivion. But, there is a cycle of change in history, we know. Though old scenes are refurbished, it is in a somewhat altered style. Sanskrit becomes Prakrit; the tones of Homer soften after many echoings into the Italian of Dante and Beatrice. So does the fresh interest of inquiry give a different value to the setting of arguments. We cannot desire-there would be great unwisdom in desiring-to ignore the spirit of the age. It has had an effect on what used to be the fixed arrangement of thesis and anti-thesis. That effect must be observed. In trying to decide more exactly the nature of it, we shall take much for granted, supposing that when the century is getting so fast towards its close there can be presumed a wide agreement on its general character.

To any one collecting the materials for a new Epic, the remarkable trait will be the age's universality or spirit of comprehensiveness. This has enabled us to gather into the space of one short lifetime all the literatures, philosophies, histories, traditions, and religions which are known to have existedmay we put it thus ?-since the pre-historic period. The telescope has not more abundantly shown us clusters of stars and starlike mist than comparative science of every kind has opened out a vision of humanity in its progress. All that men have uttered in speech, in song, in ritual and inscription, in rudest fragments of poetry and divination-" quidquid agunt homines" is to be gazed on at leisure in the pages of the

new Cyclopædia. We may laugh at the innumerable comedies there made visible, or, if a better genius rules us, perhaps we shall feel the comedies themselves to be strangely and suddenly tragic. But the humour of man is variable; the leaves, as we turn them over, will now sadden and elevate, now amuse, now terrify. One thing may be foretold with certainty. Unless we have the gift of unusual dulness, extraordinary judgment,

simple faith, there will come over us a temptation hard to be resisted, a temptation to bewilderment and despair. Like those who sweep rapidly across the globe, we shall have learned a lesson of confusion;-that regions are many, and peoples various, and beliefs, in their way of interpreting life, discordant. Our watches and clocks will have lost their immediate use, for how can we make out the moments of sunrise and sunset? and without this, things that had a meaning now have none. The more information of this kind a man gains, the less he is master of his thoughts. Second childhood comes before its appointed hour, the world is unintelligible, a mere spectacle of idle richness and entanglement of growth.

That this must be the outcome, in most minds, of a sudden multiplication of knowledge few would call in question. We are not so sure that another statement, justified in our eyes by the former, will receive much assent. Bewilderment, the difficulty of mental breathing, is not pleasant to endure or to witness. We think it cannot be good when it is all but suffocation. Then ought there not to be precautions used before inducing those relations through which it may arise? It is thought cruel to hurry a child away from home and to thrust it into the company of strangers, especially when so rough collision with the world may permanently injure its young life. Can it be a more humane proceeding.to expose raw untutored minds to rapidly gain knowledge at the cost of an enfeebled judgment? Ought not the power of judging to have had some preliminary training? Nay, should a better and higher faculty exist in us, preparation might benefit that, might hinder its ruin. No man of the ordinary ranks in life came into the world to be simply a spectator, puzzled and quiescent, of all that should go to make up a noble drama nobly executed. Each life is a drama-whether we will or no: but there is no reason why the end should be disaster. Yet action was never fine that had the light of truth, the grandeur of steady faith, taken out of its motives.

It may be the offspring of prejudice in us or a sign of narrow-minded ignorance, but we cannot see how due preparation has been made to avert or lessen the bewilderment. It has been fostered and fed by that plausible invention of an

inventive century-the liberty of the public press. For now everything can be published in any form which suits the caprice or interest of its owner. Thought was long since declared to be free. Then I may think whatever I choose. I need hold no law in reverence, no venerable creed, no pervading and prevailing conviction, though it should have entered into the life's blood of an entire people. I am, in this most unfortunate sense, master of what I shall think; and when I have thought, I am permitted to noise abroad in all manners possible the inspirations which have descended upon me or which I have called up from the deeps. Nor is it of obligation to have them discussed in a learned tongue. The request is not urged that I would select my audience, or provide that my readers be capable of discerning between good and evil. It is within my power to speak from the housetops, for I can get any new creed inserted in the magazines and reviews, and distributed by popular scientific societies. Or, if I wish to be generous, it needs only to admonish the printer and straightway there shall be tracts at a small price, or at none, calling on the passers-by to be saved according to the latest gospel. True, I may not have uttered my articles of faith in their last or definite shaping: the thing is yet in fieri. But the watchword for me and for all is "progress." Whilst we assert to-day and deny to-morrow, we are learning (what is the fashionable phrase?) to be sweetly reasonable, and the stream of tendency is carrying us-whither? For this has the look of Niagara Falls, and a quick ear may catch the sound of waters as they plunge and are broken below.

It is too late to protest. Yes, we are aware of that. Things must have their course until a higher power than man has bent them round to their unforeseen conclusion. We do not allude to the present license for its own sake. But it explains the necessity we are under of dealing with very difficult topics in a way not favourable to a proper treatment of them. It explains, likewise, and most of all, the seeming Babel of voices in European thought, which is mainly due to the never-resting issue of crudely-constructed and ephemeral publications on matters of infinite importance. S. Athanasius and S. Gregory Nazianzen complained in their day of the frequency of Councils, and taunted the Arian heretics with their new editions, revised and corrected, of professions of faith. What would they have said had their experience included leading articles, or the fresh and ever-fresh proposals in our newspapers on behalf of a score of cultured religions? Was there, at any time since man forgot to be a quadrumanous

denizen of the woods, such a startling fact as the utterances of our daily British press? In the meantime, where is the Truth?

"What is really wanted," says Mr. Tyndall, " is the lifting power of an ideal element in human life." What is wanted, we say, perhaps more plainly, is the Truth. There can be no ideal except it be in the Truth and from the Truth. It is the Catholic Church which has proclaimed in the ear of mankind that no one can live, live rightly and for immortality, by a lie. Then the most imperative need of our century is to cast out falsehood. How to accomplish it? Can we look for peace, or light, or certitude, from the prophets of this new covenant of secular knowledge? There are many who do look, with eager watchings for the dawn. Catholics, delivered from the strife of tongues, know what to think of the struggle in which they take no part.

The distinction between Catholic and non-Catholic is so clearly drawn that none can overlook it. Every day makes it more apparent. For a Catholic recognizes in heart and conscience the presence of a divine authority. It speaks to him, not out of the clouds or with the ambiguous voice of his own spirit, but through the lips of men who are clad in the raiment of God's authentic messengers. They set before him an account of the origin and end of the universe so far as it has bearings on his own life. That account he has no power to simply criticise, but he may well be shown its accordance with the tendencies of his better nature, its multiplied tokens of credibility, and its answer to the aspirations he has never been without towards a perfecting and satisfying ideal; but in the very moment of enlightening his intellect, the Church warns him that to know these things as he knows them now is a grace not given in the actual reason of man. Left to himself, a fallen creature, he would not interpret the scheme of things with that clearness and certainty which are the conditions of persevering action, the sufficient grounds why we give up the present for the future. It is not that reason, taken by itself, has not the capacity to discover how effects are related to causes, or to see in the many worlds around it proofs of an Infinite mind. But there is something-the Church declares it to us in the doctrine of original sin-acting always upon the forces of the Reason as friction does upon the forces of machinery, and blunting its effective power. It cannot, as a matter of fact, attain to its proportioned and proper result. Take away the light of Revelation, and philosophers of as keen a faculty as Plato and Aristotle will miss the truth of Creation, though this is visible and almost tangible in the