[411] "Essays," 1st Series, p. 178.
[412] Preface to the seventh edition of the Address before the British Association of Science at Belfast.
[413] Preface to the seventh edition of the Address before the British Association of Science at Belfast.
[414] Dr. Tyndall subsequently defends his course by saying, "The kingdom of science cometh not by observation and experiment alone, but is completed by fixing the roots of observation and experiment in a region inaccessible to both, and in dealing with which we are forced to fall back upon the picturing power of the mind"—"Einbildungskraft"—the force of imagination (Preface to seventh edition). Are we then to believe that the imagination is the source of scientific principles, that it has any "power of intuition, or can in any way create its own objects?" Why does he not fall back on his "Anschauungsgabe," or faculty of rational intuition, and admit that he is in the region of the metaphysical? See "Fragments of Science," p. 130.
[415] "Πρὸς Κολώτην," xxxi.
[416] This is admitted even by those who regard prayer for physical change, as, for example, the averting of disease or the fall of rain, to be "irrational and unconsciously irreverent." "I repeat that no theory of the universe, no philosophy of human nature, and no conclusion of science can ever lay an arrest upon the instincts of the universal heart in the presence of calamity, and with the prospect of its increase. Let men philosophize as they will, and let science march where it will (conquering realm after realm, and reducing all under the rigor of law), the human spirit will always 'cry unto God' in times of crisis, and will find immeasurable solace in 'committing its causes' unto Him; for the instinct to pray for relief in times of anxiety or of peril is one which can never be exorcised from the heart of man. But it does not follow that it will always (or that it ought ever) to imagine that by so doing it can deflect the order of nature or induce God to alter his prearrangements. The relief obtained is in the act of submission and of filial trust, not in the notion of being able to persuade an infinitely powerful and sympathetic Listener" ("Prayer: 'The Two Spheres:' They are Two," by the Rev. William Knight, Contemporary Review, December, 1873, p. 35). Of course we have no reason to expect that Dr. Tyndall should yield his judgment to the authority of Scripture, but we may legitimately expect the Rev. William Knight, of the Free Church of Scotland, to defer in some measure to James v. 13-18.
[417] Preface to the seventh edition of Dr. Tyndall's "Address."
[418] "Scientific Basis of Faith," p. 39.
[419] "When ten men are so in earnest on one side that they will sooner be killed than give way, and twenty are earnest enough on the other to cast their votes for it but will not risk their skins, the ten will give the law to the twenty in virtue of the robuster faith, and of the strength that goes along with it."—Froude, "History of England," vol. xii. p. 562.
[420] "Fragments of Science," p. 350.