is time to forget old conflicts which all wise thinkers have abandoned; and it is hardly a sign of that healthy life which he and others proclaim as the chief characteristic of the modern giant-rejoicing as a strong man to run his race-to have such a plaint made over its old sorrows. Dr Tyndall knows well enough that the days of persecution have ended on the side of religion. It is not from the theologian that danger is any longer to be apprehended in that direction. Let him. pursue his investigations without fear or alarm. But let him also bear in mind that, if science has her rights, so has religion, and that the great ideas which lie at the foundation of all religion are unspeakably precious to many minds no less enlightened than his own, if not exactly after his fashion of enlightenment. What such minds resent in his Address is not, what he seems to think, any free handling of old ideas, so far as they come legitimately within the range of science-but the constant insinuation that these new conceptions of science are at variance with the old truths of religion, or with the truths of a Personal God and of immortality. Dr Tyndall may be able to conceive of religion apart from these truths. He may or may not himself be a materialistic atheist. We are glad to see that he disavows the charge in the preface which he has published to his Address. We have certainly not made it against him. Nor is it, let us say, of consequence what Dr Tyndall's own views of religion are. This is a point quite beside the purpose. If he has, like other men, his "times of weakness and of doubt," and again his "times of strength and of conviction"-of healthier thought when the doctrine of "material atheism" seems to fall away from him -this is his own concern. And we should deem it impertinent to obtrude upon either his darker or his brighter hours. Sursum corda, we might say to him, by way of brotherly encouragement, but nothing more. What we and the public have to do with are not Dr Tyndall's moods of mind, nor his personal creed, but his treatment of grave questions in the name of science. This treatment has appeared, in our judgment, open to grave comment. It has meddled with much that lay outside his province, and upon which science, following its only true methods, can never be able to pronounce, -suggesting what it has not proved, and leading, without excuse, the thoughts of his hearers towards absurd negations or equally absurd imaginations,-hanging out, in short, old rags of Democritism as if they were new flags of scientific triumph. AUTHORITIES. 1. Pessimism. A History and a Criticism. By James Sully, M.A., author of 'Sensation and Intuition: Studies in Psychology and Science.' London: 1877. 2. Le Pessimisme au XIX Siècle : Leopardi, Schopenhauer, Hartmann. Par E. Caro, de l'Académie Française. Paris: 1878. 3. Essai sur les Idées Philosophiques, &c., de Leopardi. Par F. A. Aulard. Paris: 1877. 4. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Von Arthur Schopenhauer. Leipzig: 1844. 5. Arthur Schopenhauer: his Life and Philosophy. By Helen Zimmern. London: 1876. 6. Philosophie des Unbewussten. Von Eduard von Hartmann. Berlin: 1873. 7. Gesammelte Studien und Aufsätze. Von Ed. von Hartmann. Berlin: 1876. PESSIMIS M. LEOPARDI, SCHOPENHAUER, HARTMANN. No part of education is more valuable and none more neglected than the history of human opinion. There are no doubt many histories of thought, as of things. The Germans have written innumerable wearisome compilations of this as of every branch of knowledge; yet generation after generation grows up with little or no conscious knowledge of the past as if the world of thought, really worn out with use, were still an undiscovered country. There is something inevitable yet tragic in this illu sion. Without it the life of speculation would expire. Men would cease to idealise. The baffled intellect, which now soars afresh with every new age of creative activity, would fold its wings in collapse and soar no more. Humanity would lose the higher light that now draws it onward towards the unknown, which it is never to reach. Withal it must be owned that the incessant returnings of the wheel of speculation in |