Modern materialism : its attitude towards theology / by James Martineau.

  • James Martineau
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Modern materialism : its attitude towards theology / by James Martineau. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    affections, compassion, self-forgetfulness, moral obligation, is constructed in harmony with a world Divinely ruled, and in utter conflict with the Pessimist’s picture of nature. The Address thus epitomized has brought upon me the honour and the danger of a critique by Professor Tyndall,* marked by all his literary skill, and rendered persuasive by happy sarcasm and brilliant description. One fault at least he brings home to me with irresistible conviction. He blames my mode of writing as deficient in precision and lucidity. And I cannot deny the justice of the censure when I observe that my main line of argument has left no trace upon his memory, that its estimate of scientific doc- trines is misconstrued, that my feeling towards the order of nature is exhibited in reverse, that I am cross-questioned about an hypothesis of which I never dreamt, and am answered by a charming “ alternative” exposition of ascend- ing natural processes, which I follow with assent till it changes its voice from physics to metaphysics, and from its premisses of positive phenomena proclaims a negative onto- logical conclusion. That at every turn I should have put so acute a reader upon a totally false scent, rebukes me more severely than any of his direct and pertinent criti- cisms ; for, smartly as these may hit me, they fall chiefly on incidental and parenthetical remarks which might have been absent, or on mere literary form which might have been different, without affecting the purport of my Address. Whether the force of these minor thrusts is really disabling, or is only a by-play telling mainly on the fancy of the observer, a brief scrutiny will determine. (1.) In saying that the College which I represent leaves open to all new lights of knowledge “the special studies * Fragments of Science : “Materialism” and its Opponents ; and, previously, Fortnightly Review, November I, 1875.
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