Half Hours With Modern Scientists: Lectures and EssaysTyndall, John
Philosophy
Half Hours With Modern Scientists: Lectures and Essays
Tyndall, John
Science
this advance in science. Our workers are, indeed, but few; but both they
and their results will live in the records of the world’s progress. More
would there be now of them were such studies more fostered and
encouraged. Self-denying, earnest men are ready to give themselves up to
the solution of these problems, if only the means of a bare subsistence
be allowed them. When wealth shall foster science, science will increase
wealth—wealth pecuniary, it is true: but also wealth of knowledge, which
is far better.
In looking back over the whole of this discussion, I trust that it is
possible to see that the objects which we had in view at its
commencement have been more or less fully attained. I would fain believe
that we now see more clearly the beautiful harmonies of bounteous
nature; that on her many-stringed instrument force answers to force,
like the notes of a great symphony; disappearing now in potential
energy, and anon reappearing as actual energy, in a multitude of forms.
I would hope that this wonderful unity and mutual interaction of force
in the dead forms of inorganic nature, appears to you identical in the
living forms of animal and vegetable life, which make of our earth an
Eden. That even that mysterious, and in many aspects awful, power of
thought, by which man influences the present and future ages, is a part
of this great ocean of energy. But here the great question rolls upon
us, Is it only this? Is there not behind this material substance, a
higher than molecular power in the thoughts which are immortalized in
the poetry of a Milton or a Shakespeare, the art creations of a Michael
Angelo or a Titian, the harmonies of a Mozart or a Beethoven? Is there
really no immortal portion separable from this brain-tissue, though yet
mysteriously united to it? In a word, does this curiously-fashioned body
inclose a soul, God-given and to God returning? Here Science veils her
face and bows in reverence before the Almighty. We have passed the
boundaries by which physical science is enclosed. No crucible, no subtle
magnetic needle can answer now our questions. No word but His who formed
us, can break the awful silence. In presence of such a revelation
Science is dumb, and faith comes in joyfully to accept that higher truth
which can never be the object of physical demonstration.
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NOTES AND REFERENCES.
Footnote 1:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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