are they,
acting on matter, and yet distinct from matter? What can they belong to
but that '_heathen_' thing the soul--that '_entity which could be thrown
out of the window_,' and which, as Dr. Tyndall has said elsewhere,
science forbids us to believe in? Surely for an exact thinker this is
thought in strange confusion. '_Matter_,' he says, '_I define as that
mysterious something by which all this is accomplished_;' and yet here
we find him, in the face of this, invoking some second mystery as well.
And for what reason? This is the strangest thing of all. He believes in
his second Incomprehensible _because_ he believes in his first
Incomprehensible. '_If I reject one result_,' he says, '_I_ must _reject
both. I, however, reject neither_.' But why? Because one undoubted fact
is a mystery, is every mystery an undoubted fact? Such is Dr. Tyndall's
logic in this remarkable utterance: and if this logic be valid, we can
at once prove to him the existence of a personal God, and a variety of
other '_heathen_' doctrines also. But, applied in this way, it is
evident that the argument fails to move him; for a belief in a personal
God is one of the first things that his science rejects. What shall we
say of him, then, when he applies the argument in his own way? We can
say simply this--that his mind for the time being is in a state of such
confusion, that he is incapable really of clearly meaning anything. What
his position logically must be--what, on other occasions, he clearly
avows it to be--is plain enough. It is essentially that of a man
confronted by one Incomprehensible, not confronted by two. But, looked
at in certain ways, or rather looked _from_ in certain ways, this
position seems to stagger him. The problem of existence reels and grows
dim before him, and he fancies that he detects the presence of two
Incomprehensibles, when he has really, in his state of mental
insobriety, only seen one Incomprehensible double. If this be not the
case, it must be one that, intellectually, is even weaker than this. It
must be that, not of a man with a single coherent theory which his
intellect in its less vigorous moments sometimes relaxes its hold upon,
but it must be that of a man with two hostile theories which he vainly
imagines to be one, and which he inculcates alternately, each with an
equal emphasis.

If this bewilderment were peculiar to Dr. Tyndall, I should have no
motive or meaning in thus dwelling on it. But it is no peculi