Address delivered before the British Association assembled at Belfast — John Shaqi
Address delivered before the British Association assembled at BelfastTyndall, John
Religion
Address delivered before the British Association assembled at Belfast
Tyndall, John
Evolution; Religion and science; Science -- History
The strength of the doctrine of evolution consists, not in an
experimental demonstration (for the subject is hardly accessible to
this mode of proof), but in its general harmony with scientific
thought. From contrast, moreover, it derives enormous relative
strength. On the one side we have a theory (if it could with any
propriety be so called) derived, as were the theories referred to at
the beginning of this Address, not from the study of Nature, but from
the observation of men--a theory which converts the Power whose
garment is seen in the visible universe into an Artificer, fashioned
after the human model, and acting by broken efforts, as man is seen
to act. On the other side, we have the conception that all we see
around us, and all we feel within us--the phenomena of physical
nature as well as those of the human mind--have their unsearchable
roots in a cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an infinitesimal
span of which is offered to the investigation of man. And even this
span is only knowable in part. We can trace the development of a
nervous system, and correlate with it the parallel phenomena of
sensation and thought. We see with undoubting certainty that they go
hand in hand. But we try to soar in a vacuum the moment we seek to
comprehend the connexion between them. An Archimedean fulcrum is
here required which the human mind cannot command; and the effort to
solve the problem, to borrow a comparison from an illustrious friend
of mine, is like the effort of a man trying to lift himself by his
own waistband. All that has been here said is to be taken in
connexion with this fundamental truth. When 'nascent senses' are
spoken of, when 'the differentiation of a tissue at first vaguely
sensitive all over' is spoken of, and when these processes are
associated with 'the modification of an organism by its environment,'
the same parallelism, without contact, or even approach to contact,
is implied. Man the _object_ is separated by an impassable gulf from
man the _subject_. There is no motor energy in intellect to carry it
without logical rupture from the one to the other.
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