1 Tulloch (1885) p.151: “The modern scientific school has deliberately espoused the rights of matter”.

2 A32. Cf. B&C, p161f., which aptly comments: “Tyndall, whose gift for the popular exposition of science is still so widely appreciated, on this occasion ventured somewhat boldly out of the departments of learning in which he was an acknowledged master, and attempted an historical survey of the progress of philosophy and science throughout the world’s history with a view to establishing the pre-eminence of his own somewhat materialistic school of thought”.

3 This formed the basis for Maxwell’s article “Atom” in EB9, vol.iii (1875) pp.36-49.

4 See Eve and Creasey (1945) pp.174-8 for a pro-Tyndall account and Knott (1911) pp.18 and 24 for brief allusions to the controversy from Tait’s side. The original attack on Tyndall’s integrity came in Tait’s contribution to Forbes’ biography, The Life and Letters of James David Forbes (Shairp et al. 1873) and the battle was continued, first by Tyndall in the Contemporary Review for 1873 (“Principal Forbes and his Biographers”) and subsequently in the pages of Nature until the latter’s editor called a halt.

5 Tait contributed chapters xiii and xiv to Forbes’ biography.

6 J.D. Burchfield in Brock et al. (eds.) 1981, p.1. The Calvinist upbringing of both Bain and Tyndall is significant.

7 Tyndall wrote (Nature, vol.8, p.399): “With regard to Mr Tait’s criticism of my ‘popular’ writings it has, of course, nothing to do with his defence of Forbes, but is the product of mere ignoble spite. He asks me to reply to him not according to the letter, but according to the spirit of his attack. If I might use the expression I would say, ‘God Forbid!’ for how could I do so without lowering myself to some extent to his level. . . It is this man whose blunders and whose injustice have been so often reduced to nakedness, without ever once showing that he possessed the manhood to acknowledge a committed wrong, who now puts himself forward as the corrector of my errors and the definer of my scientific position”. After the editor of Nature (vol.viii, p.431) terminated this unseemly exchange of insults – “We feel that we are only consulting the true interests of Science in declining to print further communications on a subject which has assumed something of a personal tone” – Tyndall apologised (ib.) for two passages in his previous letter: “The first is that in which I speak of lowering myself to the level of Prof. Tait; the second that in which I reflect upon his manhood”.

8 Cf. J.S. Rowlinson, in Brock et al. (eds.) 1981, p.113: “Long after the events we can see a common pattern to them –Tyndall takes up eagerly some field of research in which there has been already some considerable degree of progress, he adds some new observations or, very often, devises some ingenious experiments, but then claims a greater novelty or distinction for his additions than an impartial observer would allow”.

9 Cf. Tyndall’s paper “On Dust and Disease”, delivered to the Royal Institution in January, 1871 (in Tyndall 1872, pp.287-342). His researches in this field were later summed up in a volume entitled, Floating Matter in the Air in relation to Putrefaction and Infection (1887).

10 In “On Dust and Disease”, Tyndall describes Lister’s innovations in antisepsis and writes (p.315): “Secured from the danger of putrefaction, it is amazing how, under the hands of a really able surgeon, the human flesh and bones may be cut, torn, and crunched with impunity. The accounts of our eminent surgeons read like romance”. The paper as a whole represents a most elegant illustration of observation and induction, via a series of simple experiments, leading to the development of a general principle (that germs cause disease) and also demonstrating, by deduction, the practical application of the principle – in this case to the invention of the respirator.

11 Ib., p.298: “The strength of the theory consists in the perfect parallelism of the phenomena of contagious disease with those of life. As a planted acorn gives birth to an oak competent to produce a whole crop of acorns, each gifted with the power of reproducing a whole crop of acorns . . . so, it is contended, these epidemic diseases literally plant their seeds, grow, and shake abroad new germs, which, meeting in the body their proper food and temperature, finally take possession of whole populations. . . The matter of each contagious disease reproduces itself as rigidly as if it were (as Miss Nightingale puts it) dog or cat”.

12 “Prayer and Natural Law”: in Fragments of Science, p.33.

13 Ib., p.36.

14 Ib., p.37.

15 Frank M Turner, “John Tyndall and Victorian Scientific Naturalism”: in Brock et al. (1981) p.176f. Dean Stanley, always something of a non-conformist within the Anglican establishment, was to become a supportive correspondent of Robertson Smith in later years.

16 Ib., p.177. The original idea had been put to Tyndall by Henry Thompson, a London surgeon. The celebrated sequel to this debate was Francis Galton’s paper for the Fortnightly Review in 1872, “Statistical inquiries into the efficacy of prayer” where, for the first time, statistical analysis was used as a means of experimental verification in the battle between science and theology. Galton compared the average longevity of those (such as members of the Royal Family or bishops) for whose well-being prayers were regularly offered up on a large-scale basis with that of others not so favoured, finding that no significant advantage in this respect accrued to the former. It is interesting that, in later life, Galton chose to omit this study from the second edition of his collected papers, Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, on the grounds that the subject concerned “certain views then thought orthodox but which are now growing obsolete” (Preface to the Second Edition, p.vii).

17 It may be argued that such matters only became an issue of theodicy when demonstrable means of control began to be discovered. In the case of communicable disease, the advent of vaccination marked this point.

18 Chalmers (1835) vol.ii, p.113: “Now we hold it of capital importance in this argument, that, in our own species at least, both these enjoyments and these sufferings are mainly resolvable into moral causes – insomuch that, in the vast majority of cases, the deviation from happiness can be traced to an anterior deviation from virtue; and that, apart from death and accident and unavoidable disease, the wretchedness of humanity is due to a vicious and ill-regulated morale”.

19 Ib., p.115.

20 Cf. F.M.Turner (1974) p.120: “The most important of these [quasi-scientific] ideas was the concept of a cosmic ether, an imperceptible substance that according to most physicists filled up apparently empty space and provided the medium for the transmission of light and other forms of energy”.

21 From Tyndall’s Rede Lecture in 1865 “On Radiation”: in Fragments of Science (1872) p.173. Interestingly, Tyndall had emphasised the purely hypothetical nature of the ether in his B.A. lecture of 1870 “On the Scientific Use of the Imagination”: “With all our belief of it, it will be well to keep the theory of a lumeniferous æther plastic and capable of change. You may, moreover, urge that although the phenomena occur as if the medium existed, the absolute demonstration of its existence is still wanting”. As we shall see, no such demonstration was to be forthcoming.

22 Quoted by Rowlinson in Brock et al. (1981) p.116.

23 A full account of the dispute is given by Rowlinson (in Brock et al., 1981, pp. 118-124) who observes: “The modern view of the flow of glaciers is closer to that of Forbes than to that of Tyndall”.

24 Tyndall (backed by Huxley and Rudolf Clausius) accused Forbes, for instance, of failing to credit Canon Rendu (later Bishop of Annéçy) with having carried out the pioneering work in this field, published by the latter in 1841. See n.29 below: “Principal Forbes and his Biographers”.

25 After an initial onslaught on Tyndall in October, 1873 (Letter 34, in Cook & Wedderburn eds., 1907, vol. xxvii), Ruskin returned to the topic six months later, in Letter 41 (ib., vol. xxviii, p.123): “Some of my correspondents ask me what has become of my promised debate on the glaciers. Well, it got crevassed and split itself . . . because I found that the extremely scientific Professor Tyndall had never distinguished viscosity from plasticity (or the consistency of honey from butter) . . .”. This was fair criticism on the part of Ruskin, who was by no means uninformed on the topic.

26 Much of what Ruskin has to say (though anti-Tyndall) is balanced and sound, e.g. (p.640): “Nor am I prepared altogether to justify Forbes in his method of proceeding, except on the terms of battle which men of science have laid down for themselves”; and (p.642): “The readers of Fors . . . have no conception of the degree in which general science is corrupted and retarded by these jealousies of the schools; nor how important it is . . . that the criminal indulgence of them should be chastised”.

27 Ib., p.642: “I am not likely to overrate the abilities of Professor Tyndall; but he had at least intelligence enough to know that his dispute of the statements of Forbes by quibbling on the word ‘viscous’ was as uncandid as it was unscholarly and it retarded the advance of glacier science for at least ten years. It was unscholarly because no other single word existed in the English language which Forbes could have used instead; and uncandid, because Professor Tyndall was aware of the difference between ice and glue, without any need for experiments on them at the Royal Institution”.

28 Ib.

29 A reference to “Professor Forbes and his Biographers” in ContempRev., August 1873. (vol.xxii, pp.484-508). This is an extended (and to a considerable extent convincing) vindication by Tyndall of his position in the debate over priority. He notes [p.485] that his book, The Forms of Water, arose out of his Christmas Juvenile Lectures at the Royal Institution in 1871 and was not addressed to “a cultured man of science but to a youth of average intelligence”. Tyndall goes on to mention, en passant, that The Forms of Water had nevertheless been chosen for inclusion in the American Scientific International Series (other authors included such agnostic, if not atheistic, writers as Bain, Huxley, W.K. Clifford and J. W. Draper). The medium of a “children’s book” was a popular Victorian device, not only for moral didacticism but also for delivering covert yet somewhat unctuous attacks on one’s academic opponents. Ruskin, for instance, uses the very same strategy in The Ethics of the Dust (Ruskin, 1907, p.47) first published in 1866.

30 That public opinion was by now beginning to grow somewhat impatient of Tait’s aggressive onslaughts is well illustrated by a leader writer in the Scotsman (24 April, 1874): “. . . he [Tait] seems to love nobody and nothing, and everybody seems to love him, at least enough never to be angry with him. He is not exactly, but he is half, an academical Ishmael; his hand is against every man, but no man’s hand is against him” (quoted in Eve & Creasey, 1945, p. 178).

31 References are to the text in RepBA (1874) pp.lxvi-xcvii; a shortened report is contained in Nature (20 August, 1874, pp.309-319). Tyndall later published a revised form of the address.

32 Some earlier B.A. Presidential Addresses had been controversial but Tyndall’s had (to quote F.M. Turner in Brock et al., 1981, p.170): “. . . no precedent for its extravagance, certitude, and strident intellectual imperialism. When he finally sat down, he had succeeded in sparking perhaps the most intensive debate of the Victorian conflict of science and religion. It aroused far more controversy than the Huxley-Wilberforce encounter and more clearly illustrated the social and intellectual issues at stake”. The immediate reaction was (as Maxwell wrote, in his verses to Tait) an “indignation meeting” in the Ulster Hall.

33 Published in Tyndall’s Fragments of Science (1872) pp.127-162. This stout defence of the imaginative and creative element in scientific discovery reflects an often-neglected side of Tyndall’s personality.

34 Ib., pp.127f.

35 Ib., p154. Cf. p.161: “Fear not the Evolution hypothesis. Steady yourself in its presence upon that faith in the ultimate triumph of truth which was expressed by old Gamaliel when he said: ‘If it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; if it be of man, it will come to nought’ ” .

36 RepBA (1874) p.lxxi.

37 Ib.

38 John William Draper (1811-82), the son of an English Methodist minister, emigrated to the USA in 1832. For a critical and perhaps unjustly negative study of Draper’s “religion of science”, see Fleming (1950).

39 Both books had a significant effect in shaping opinion within an increasingly literate population.

40 Its publication date in the London edition is given as 1875 but Draper’s preface is dated December, 1873 and the book’s New York publication was 1874. It constitutes volume xiii of the International Scientific Series, of which vol.i had been Tyndall’s Forms of Water and vol.iv Bain’s Mind and Body. The overwhelming majority of contributors to what became a lengthy and widely popular international series were proponents of scientific naturalism, such as Henry Maudsley, W.K. Clifford, Rudolph Virchow and T.H. Huxley, but one notable exception was Balfour Stewart.

41 Draper (1875) p.320.

42 Ib., p.363. Draper’s vigorous and self-confident apotheosis of science culminates in a devastating attack upon the decree of papal infallibility emerging from the Vatican Council of 1869-70 and the curbs placed upon freedom of expression by the Catholic Church. At the same time, Draper makes an interesting plea for “a reconciliation of the Reformation with Science . . . if only the Protestant Churches would live up to the maxim taught by Luther . . . the right of private interpretation of the Scriptures”.

43 Tyndall relies wholly on Draper for his account of the Arabic preservation and development of science during the Dark Ages and for his descriptions of ecclesiastical hostility towards the re-emergence of scientific discovery with figure such as Giordano Bruno and Galileo.

44 RepBA. 1874, p.lxxiii.

45 Cf. Maxwell, s.v. “Atom”, in EB9, vol.iii (1875) pp.36-49. The contemporary emergence of concepts associated with mass production, standardization and quality-control gave a whole new dimension to the idea of “manufacture” but the application of such ideas to the building bricks of matter carried hubristic overtones which are characteristic of nineteenth century scientific thinking. Cf. the satirical verses, “Atom the Architect”, in Punch, vol.lxvii, p.199 (November 7, 1874).

46 RepBA. (1874) p.lxxix. Matthew Arnold and W.E. Gladstone were only two such “superior” Victorian minds who were deeply impressed by Butler’s anti-Deistic arguments: cf. Arnold’s lecture to the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution in 1876 on “Bishop Butler and the Zeit-Geist” (ed. Super, 1972, pp.11-62). Gladstone published an annotated edition of Butler’s works.

47 Ib.; cf. Butler (1860) p.38: “Since the loss of organs or limbs involves not the destruction of the powers of perception or will, we must consider these limbs and organs merely as instruments; and then the destruction of those instruments will no more involve a presumption of the destruction of the powers they ministered to, than the destruction of any other instrument of perception or motion, as an eye-glass or a walking-stick; while the phenomena of dreaming show us that we have in some cases, the power of receiving the impressions ordinarily conveyed by the organs of sense, without the aid of those organs”.

48 Butler (1860, p.37) argued that as “a sleep or a swoon” could suspend consciousness, so death, by analogy, would operate similarly to interrupt but not destroy this faculty.

49 RepBA (1874) pp.lxxix-lxxxi.

50 Ib., p.lxxxif.

51 Ib., p.lxxxii. Cf.Butler (1860) p.38: “It is no objection to the previous arguments that they apply equally to brutes as to men . . . the economy of the world may require the future as well as the present existence of brute natures, for anything we know to the contrary”.

52 Ib., p.lxxxiif.

53 “I know nothing more admirable in the way of scientific exposition than those early articles of his on the origin of species. He swept the curve of discussion through the really significant points of the subject, enriched his exposition with profound original remarks and reflections, often summing up in a single pithy sentence an argument which in a less compact mind would have spread over pages” (ib., p.lxxxiv).

54 Ib., p.lxxxvii.

55 “The human brain is the organized register of infinitely numerous experiences received during the evolution of life, or rather during the evolution of that series of organisms through which the human organism has been reached. The effects of the most uniform and frequent of these experiences have been successively bequeathed, principal and interest, and have slowly mounted to that high intelligence which lies latent in the brain of the infant”. (ib., p.xci).

56 Ib., p.xcii.

57 Ib., p.xciv.

58 “And grotesque in relation to scientific culture as many of the religions of the world have been and are – dangerous, nay, destructive, to the dearest privileges of freemen as some of them undoubtedly have been, and would, if they could, be again – it will be wise to recognise them as the forms of a force, mischievous, if permitted to intrude on the region of objective knowledge, over which it holds no command, but capable of adding in the region of poetry and emotion, inward completeness and dignity to man” (ib., p.xcv).

59 Ib.

60 Ib., p.xcvi.

61 Ib., p.xcvii.

62 Mallock (1878). William Hurrell Mallock (1849-1923) was a fervent Anglo-Catholic and his “novel” was strongly satirical of liberal theologians, such as Jowett, as well as of frank atheists such as W.K. Clifford and scientific materialists like Huxley and Tyndall. The New Republic and the literary response generally are discussed more fully in a later chapter.

63 August 22, 1874.There is a manuscript copy of the letter in CUL Add. Mss 7476 (N24).

64 Cf. Bediako (1997) p.132: “Smith was clearly alive to current trends of anti-Christian philosophical thought and was alert to opportunities for arguing the case in a scientific and apologetic way. His method in this letter demonstrates a continuity with the methods of research and argumentation of his earlier career, namely, first to take what has been said on its own terms, assess it for accuracy of perception and understanding of the data used, seek for the roots of error within the author’s own thought, and, on this basis and not by baldly countering with Christian assertions, but guided by Christian perceptions, argue for the validity of Christian understandings”. Bediako’s comments here are useful but fail to emphasise the selectivity of Smith’s approach. It is important also to be aware of the distinctive nature of Smith’s “apologetic”, which mirrors none of the contemporary British styles of apologetic.

65 CUL Add. Mss 7476 (N32).

66 This snippet of useless information had been put forward by Draper, reproduced uncritically by Tyndall and rebutted by Smith, who correctly noted that camisia (whence “camisole” and “chemise”) is found in Jerome. The Arabic qamiç is in all probability a borrowing from the Latin (OED). The preoccupation with this topic (shared by Tulloch as well) seems a reflection of repressed Victorian eroticism.

67 A close friend and supporter of Swinburne, (Walter) Theodore Watts (1832-1914) changed his name in 1896 to Theodore Watts-Dunton. He wrote the article “Poetry” for EB9, contributed prolifically to the Athenaeum and other periodicals, and was author of a widely popular novel, Aylwin.

68 Letters of A.C. Swinburne (ed. Lang, 4 vols., 1959-62, vol.ii, pp.334f.).

69 James Thomson (1834-1882) is best known for his profoundly pessimistic poem, The City of Dreadful Night, first published in The National Reformer from March to May, 1874. He wrote numerous polemical pieces for Charles Bradlaugh’s publication. The text of this article is reproduced in Schaeffer ed. (1967) pp.101-105.

70 Ib.

71 Betokened. for example, as we have seen, by the son’s references to spectrographic analysis (“This is for Papa”) in the letter to his mother of October 26, 1869 (C160a).

72 For the full text, see Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for November, 1874 (vol. cxvi, p.582f). Maxwell’s concluding reference to the “infinite azure” is an allusion to Tyndall’s work on the blueness of the sky – one of Tyndall’s many preoccupations (romantic as well as scientific) and the subject of numerous humorous contemporary jibes. This dual fascination with dust and the azure blue of the heavens is well-exemplified in Tyndall’s paper, “On chemical rays and the structure and light of the sky” (Fragments of Science, pp.241-285) which draws together his life-long love affair with the Alps and his researches into dust, molecular physics, the assumption of an all-pervasive ether, and the polarisation of light.

73 Blackwood’s, vol.cxvi, pp.519-539. A revised version of the paper is reproduced in a volume of Tulloch’s collected essays, Modern Theories in Philosophy and Religion (Tulloch, 1884, pp.125-166) and references given here are to the latter.

74 In ContempRev, vol.xxix (March, 1877, pp. 535-551).

75 Tulloch (1884) p.128.

76 Ib., p.126.

77 Ib.

78 Ib., p.127f.

79 Ib., p.130.

80 Ib., p.132.

81 Ib., p.134f: “All the same, Professor Tyndall hardly makes a fair use of the quotation of Hume. Hume is writing of the origin of religion, and not of supposed theories of ‘the origin of things’. . . Whether Hume’s theory be correct or not, is nothing to the point”.

82 Ib., p.145f: “Mr Darwin’s good sense can hardly have welcomed this outburst. . . Whatever merit there may be in the elucidation of the principle of natural selection to which he has devoted his life, let him by all means have it. For ourselves, we believe that the importance of the principle has been greatly exaggerated. But withal, Mr Darwin was not a philosopher and did not claim to be one. His genius was almost solely a genius of observation and narration, lacking both in spiritual and synthetic insight”. This comment is less than fair to Darwin.

83 “Even if the hypothesis of Evolution were proved, and science were able to demonstrate the continuity of nature from first to last, this would not render the idea of a Divine Mind originating nature and working in it through all its evolutions the less tenable. The intellectual necessity which demands a creative Mind or an intellectual origin of all things would remain the same” (ib., p.162). It is interesting to perceive how Tulloch here is laying the ground for a strategic withdrawal from the battle against evolution, in much the same way as Thomas Chalmers, sixty years earlier, could be seen preparing for a seemly retreat from the chronology of Genesis in the light of the accumulating geological evidence of terrestrial longevity. See Chalmers’ essay, “Remarks on Cuvier’s theory of the earth”, in Tracts and Essays (Chalmers, 1850).

84 Ib., p.163.

85 Ib., p.160. Cf. n.1 above, for the “rights of matter”.

86 Ib., p.164f.: “In so far as theology in the past may have intruded upon science, and refused its claims of investigation and of judgment in the domain of nature, theology was in error; and it ought to be grateful rather than recriminatory that science has taught it its error . . . It is time to forget old conflicts which all wise thinkers have abandoned . . . Dr Tyndall knows well enough that the days of persecution have ended on the side of religion.” (Tulloch’s emphasis) There is a studied silence on all sides – apart from Draper’s strident comments and the pages of Punch – on the ominous promulgations of the Vatican Council in 1870.

87 Ib., p.165.

88 Punch, vol.lxvii, p.75 (August 22, 1874).

89 Ib, p.85 (August 29, 1874): “Democritus at Belfast.”.

90 Ib., p.247: from “The fine old Atom-Molecule (Air – The Fine Old English Gentleman)”. The half-yearly volume of Punch, for July to December, 1874, contains at least six direct references to Tyndall’s pronouncements and offer a crude but unique heuristic measure of the level of public interest in the latest scientific ideas. On the same basis, reaction during the 1860s to Darwin’s Origin of Species was much slower and more uncertain, even after Huxley’s lectures.