As there is no materialism, in any known sense of that term, in the doctrine of this address, so likewise there is no atheism. In fact, in this same sentence Tyndall speaks of the "creator" of what he likes to call "matter" or "cosmical life." He objects strongly to a creator who works mechanically, and he seems to reprove Darwin for admitting an original or primordial form, created at first by the Deity. "The anthropomorphism, which it seemed the object of Mr. Darwin to set aside, is as firmly associated with the creation of a few forms as with the creation of a multitude." In another passage he says: "Is there not a temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms that nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods?". But this last sentence shows a singular vacillation in so clear a thinker as Tyndall. How can one close "to some extent" with such a statement as that of Lucretius? Either the gods meddle, or they do not meddle. They can hardly be considered as meddling "to some extent." In still another passage he contrasts the doctrine of evolution with the usual doctrine of creation, rejecting the last in favor of the other, because creation makes of God "an artificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting by broken efforts, as man is seen to act." All these expressions are somewhat vague, implying, as it seems, a certain obscurity in Tyndall's own thought. But it is not atheism. His "cosmical life" probably is exactly what Cudworth means by "plastic life." It is well known that Cudworth, whose great work is a confutation of all atheism, himself admits what he calls "a plastic nature" in the universe as a subordinate instrument of divine Providence. Just as Tyndall objects to regarding the Deity as "an artificer," Cudworth objects to the "mechanic theists," who make the Deity act directly upon matter from without, by separate efforts, instead of pouring a creative and arranging life into nature. We can easily see that Cudworth, like Tyndall, would object to Darwin's one or two "primordial germs." His "plastic nature" is working everywhere and always, though under a divine guidance. It is "a life," and therefore incorporeal. It is an unconscious life, which acts, not knowingly, but fatally. Man, according to Cudworth, partakes of this life from the life of the universe, just as he partakes of heat and cold from the heat and cold of the universe. Thus Cudworth, believing in some such "cosmical life" as Tyndall imagines, conceives it as being itself the organ and instrument of the Deity. Tyndall, therefore, though less clear in his statements than Cudworth, is not logically involved in atheism by those statements, unless we implicate in the same condemnation the writer whose vast work constitutes the fullest arsenal of weapons against all the forms of atheism.