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13. THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY
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THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY SOME POETIC AND RELIGIOUS WRITINGS John Tyndall (1820–1893) Tyndall’s scientific writings extended to numerous areas and well equipped him to serve as superintendent of the Royal Institution, a leading London scientific center . Tyndall was also a popular writer. One historian commented concerning Tyndall ’s famous presidential address at the 1874 Belfast meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science that among Victorian battles regarding science and religion, “Probably no single incident in the conflict of religion and science raised so much furor.”1 The published draft of his “Additional Remarks on Miracles” (1867) contains the statement: To other miracles similar remarks apply. Transferring our thoughts from this little sand-grain of an earth to the immeasurable heavens, where countless 438 1. Frank M. Turner, “The Victorian Conflict between Science and Religion: A Professional Dimension,” Isis 69 (1978): 373. T T H H I I R R T T E E E E N N worlds with freights of life probably revolve unseen, the very suns which warm them being barely visible across abysmal space; reflecting that beyond these sparks of solar fire, suns innumerable may burn, whose light can never stir the optic nerve at all; and bringing these reflections face to face with the idea of the Builder and Sustainer of it all showing Himself in a burning bush, exhibiting His hinder parts, or behaving in other familiar ways ascribed to Him in Jewish Scripture, the lncongruity must appear.2 Then in his 1874 Presidential “Belfast Address” to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Tyndall commented: The impregnable position of science may be described in a few words. We claim, and we shall wrest from theology, the entire domain of cosmological theory. (2:210) [Should there not be a] temptation to close to some extent . . . with Bruno, when he declares that Matter is not “that mere empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who brings forth all things. . . ?” Believing, as I do, in the continuity of nature, . . . I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in . . . Matter . . . the promise and potency of all terrestrial life. (2:203–4) Frederic Harrison (1831–1923) Educated at King’s College, London, and at Oxford, Harrison became a professor of jurisprudence and international law. He was also the leader of the positivist movement in England in the late nineteenth century, authoring many books in support of the positivist perspective. With a geocentric astronomy . . . , the anthropomorphic Creator, the celestial resurrection , and the Divine Atonement, were natural and homogeneous ideas. . . . But with a science where this planet shrinks into an unconsidered atom . . . , the Augustan Theology goes overboard.3 t h e l a t e n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y 439 2. John Tyndall, Fragments of Science (New York: P. F. Collier, 1901), 2:41–42. 3. As quoted without reference by Richard Holt Hutton in Criticisms on Contemporary Thought and Thinkers (London: Macmillan, 1894), 1:288. [100.24.20.141] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:58 GMT) Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) While working at the British Museum, Patmore published much poetry, including religious poetry. A friend of Ruskin and of Tennyson, he converted to Catholicism in 1864. One example of his poetry is his “The Two Deserts” (1866): Not greatly moved with awe am I To learn that we may spy Five thousand firmaments beyond our own. The best that’s known Of the heavenly bodies does them credit small. View’d close, the Moon’s fair ball Is of ill objects worst, A corpse in Night’s highway, naked, fire-scarr’d, accurst; And now they tell That the Sun is plainly seen to boil and burst Too horribly for hell. So, judging from these two, As we must do, The Universe, outside our living Earth, Was all conceiv’d in the Creator’s mirth. Forecasting at the time Man’s spirit deep, To make dirt cheap. Put by the Telescope! Better without it man may see, Stretch’d awful in the hush’d midnight, The ghost of his eternity. Give me the nobler glass that swells to the eye The things which near us lie, Till Science rapturously hails, In the minutest water-drop A torment of innumerable tails These at the least do live. But rather give A mind not much to pry Beyond...