sentence tells us that it is impossible that science can ever solve the
riddle of things, and tells us in the next sentence that it is doubtful
if this impossibility will be accomplished within the next fifty
years?--who argues that God is a mystery, and therefore God is a
fiction; who admits that consciousness is a fact, and yet proclaims that
it is a mystery; and who says that the fact of matter producing
consciousness being a mystery, proves the mystery of consciousness
acting on matter to be a fact?

[36] It is true that one of the favourite teachings of the positive
school is, that as to this question the proper attitude is that of
Agnosticism; in other words, that a state of perpetual suspense on this
subject is the only rational one. They are asked, have we a soul, a
will, and consequently any moral responsibility? And the answer is that
they must shake their heads in doubt. It is true they tell us that it is
but _as men of science_ that they shake their heads. But Dr. Tyndall
tells us what this admission means. '_If the materialist is
confounded_,' he says, '_and science rendered dumb_, who else is
prepared with an answer? _Let us lower our heads and acknowledge our
ignorance, priest and philosopher--one and all._' In like manner,
referring to the feeling which others have supposed to be a sense of
God's presence and majesty: this, for the '_man of science_,' he says is
the sense of a '_power which gives fulness and force, to his existence,
but which he can neither analyse nor comprehend_.' Which means, that
because a physical specialist cannot analyse this sense, it is therefore
incapable of analysis. A bishop might with equal propriety use just the
same language about a glass of port wine, and argue with, equal cogency
that it was a primary and simple element. What is meant is, that the
facts of the materialist are the only facts we can be certain of; and
because these can give man no moral guidance, that therefore man can
have no moral guidance at all.

Let us illustrate the case by some example that is mentally presentable.
Some ruined girl, we will say, oppressed with a sense of degradation,
comes to Dr. Tyndall and lays her case before him. '_I have heard you
are a very wise man_,' she says to him, '_and that you have proved that
the priest is all wrong, who prepared me a year ago for my confirmation.
Now tell me, I beseech you tell me, is mine really the desperate state I
have been taught to think it i