John Tyndall

“ In many places the space was merely covered by a thin crust, which, when trod upon, instantly yielded, and we sank with a shock sometimes to the hips. Our way next lay up a steep incline to the Grand Plateau, the depth and tenderness of the snow augmenting as we ascended. We had not yet seen the sun, but, as we attained the brow which forms the entrance to the Grand Plateau, he hung his disk upon a spike of rock to our left, and, surrounded by a glory of interference spectra of the most gorgeous colours, blazed down upon us. ”

“ It is a delusion which affects us all. Yet somehow the essence of our religion never finds its way into these frames of theory: as we put them together it slips away, and, if we turn to pursue it, still retreats behind; ever ready to work with the will, to unbind and sweeten the affections, and bathe the life with reverence, but refusing to be seen, or to pass from a divine hue of thinking into a human pattern of thought. ”

“ From a range of snow-peaks linked together by ridges of black rock, the Gauli glacier falls, at first steeply as snow, then more gently as ice. We scan the mountain barrier to ascertain where it ought to be attacked. No one of us has ever been here before, and the scanty scraps of information which we have received tell us that at one place only is the barrier passable. We may reach the summit at several points from this side, but all save one, we are informed, lead to the brink of intractable precipices, which fall sheer to the Lauteraar glacier. We observe, discuss, and finally decide. ”

“ The clergy of England—at all events the clergy of London—have nerve enough to listen to the strongest views which any one amongst us would care to utter; and they invite, if they do not challenge, men of the most decided opinions to state and stand by those opinions in open court. No theory upsets them. Let the most destructive hypothesis be stated only in the language current among gentlemen, and they look it in the face. They forego alike the thunders of heaven and the terrors of the other place, smiting the theory, if they do not like it, with honest secular strength. ”

“ The territory of physics is wide, but it has its limits from which we look with vacant gaze into the region beyond. Let us follow matter to its utmost bounds, let us claim it in all its forms — even in the muscles, blood, and brain of man himself — as ours to experiment with and to speculate upon. Casting the term "vital force" from our vocabulary, let us reduce, if we can, the visible phenomena of life to mechanical attractions and repulsions. Having thus exhausted physics, and reached its very rim, a mighty Mystery still looms beyond us. We have, in fact, made no step towards its solution. ”

“ Once the orb appeared behind a rounded mass of snow which lay near the summit of the Aiguille du Midi. Looked at with the naked eyes, it seemed to possess a billowy motion, the light darting from it in dazzling curves,—a subjective effect produced by the abnormal action of the intense light upon the eye. As the sun's disk came more into view, its rays however still grazing the summit of the mountain, interference-spectra darted from it on all sides, and surrounded it with a glory of richly-coloured bars. Mingling however with the grandeur of nature, we had the anger and obstinacy of man. ”

“ What we should oppose, to the death if necessary, is every attempt to found upon this elemental bias of man's nature a system which should exercise despotic sway over his intellect. I do not fear any such consummation. Science has already, to some extent, leavened the world, and it will leaven it more and more. I should look upon the mild light of science breaking in upon the minds of the youth of Ireland, and strengthening gradually to the perfect day, as a surer check to any intellectual or spiritual tyranny which might threaten this island than the laws of princes or the swords of emperors. ”

“ Sweeping round, the vision meets an aggregate of peaks which look, as fledglings to their mother, towards the mighty Dom. Then come the repellent crags of Mont Cervin, the idea of moral savagery, of wild untameable ferocity, mingling involuntarily with our contemplation of the gloomy pile. Next comes an object scarcely less grand, conveying it may be even a deeper impression of majesty and might than the Matterhorn itself—the Weisshorn, perhaps the most splendid object in the Alps. But beauty is associated with its force, and we think of it, not as cruel, but as grand and strong. ”

“ THE GLORY of a Natural Philosopher appears to depend less on the power of his imagination to explore minute recesses or immeasurable space than on the skill and patience with which, by observation and experiment, he assures us of the certainty of these invisible operations. Newton’s glory is founded, not on the sudden imagination by which he leapt ‘from a falling apple to a falling moon,’ but on that astonishing tenacity of investigation by which he reduced his guesses to moral certainties, and enabled us to witness a practical verification of his laws in every almanack we use. ”

“ Day soon dawns, and the morning rose-light touches the first peak westward of us; the air is wonderfully calm and still, and for to-day, at all events, we have good weather, without that bitter enemy the north wind; but a certain opaque look in the sky, long streaks of cloud radiating from the south-west horizon up towards the zenith, and the too dark purple of the hills south of Aosta, are signs that the good weather will not be lasting. ”

“ On the 4th I rose early, and, strapping on my telescope, ascended to the Montanvert, where I engaged a youth to accompany me up the glacier. The heavens were clear and beautiful:—blue over the Aiguille du Dru, blue over the Jorasse and Mont Mallet, deep blue over the pinnacles of Charmoz, and the same splendid tint stretched grandly over the Col du Géant and its Aiguille. No trace of condensation appeared till towards eleven o'clock, when a little black balloon of cloud swung itself over the Aiguilles Rouges. ”

“ Pure unsifted solar light is white; and, if all the wave-constituents of such light be reduced in the same proportion, the light, though diminished in intensity, will still be white. The whiteness of snow with the sun shining upon it, is barely tolerable to the eye. The same snow under an overcast firmament is still white. Such a firmament enfeebles the light by reflecting it upwards; and when we stand above a cloud-field — on an Alpine summit, for instance, or on the top of Snowdon — and see, in the proper direction, the sun shining on the clouds below us, they appear dazzlingly white. ”

“ Now philosophers may be right in affirming that we cannot transcend experience. But we can, at all events, carry it a long way from its origin. We can also magnify, diminish, qualify, and combine experiences, so as to render them fit for purposes entirely new. We are gifted with the power of Imagination,—combining what the Germans call Anschauungsgabe and Einbildungskraft—and by this power we can lighten the darkness which surrounds the world of the senses. There are tories even in science who regard imagination as a faculty to be feared and avoided rather than employed. ”

“ The Valais range had been covered before we quitted the Æggischhorn; and, though the sun rode unimpeded in the higher heavens, vast masses of cloud continued to thrust themselves forth like tree-branches into the upper air.
The clouds extended, becoming ever blacker, until finally they were unlocked by thunder, and shook themselves down upon us in furious rain. The glacier is here cut up into oblique valleys of ice, subdivided by sharp-edged crevasses. We advanced swiftly along the ridges, but these finally abutted against the mountain, and we were compelled to cross from ridge to ridge. ”

“ If I look upon our earth, with its orbital revolution and axial rotation, as one small issue of the process which made the solar system what it is, will any theologian deny my right to entertain and express this theoretic view? Time was when a multitude of theologians would have been found to do so — when that archenemy of science which now vaunts its tolerance would have made a speedy end of the man who might venture to publish any opinion of the kind. ”

“ Steady yourselves 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.’ Under the fierce light of scientific enquiry, this hypothesis is sure to be dissipated if it possess not a core of truth. Trust me, its existence as a hypothesis in the mind is quite compatible with the simultaneous existence of all those virtues to which the term Christian has been applied. It does not solve—it does not profess to solve—the ultimate mystery of this universe. ”

“ Slowly and solemnly the pure white cone appeared to rise higher and higher into the sunlight, being afterwards mottled with gold and gloom, as clouds drifted between it and the sun. I descended alone towards the base of the mountain, making my way through a rugged gorge, the sides of which were strewn with pine-trees, splintered, broken across, and torn up by the roots. I finally reached the end of a glacier, formed by the snow and shattered ice which fall from the shoulders of the Jungfrau. ”

“ It entirely transcends us. The mind of man may be compared to a musical instrument with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions we have an infinitude of silence. The phenomena of matter and force lie within our intellectual range, and as far as they reach we will at all hazards push our enquiries. But behind, and above, and around all, the real mystery of this universe lies unsolved, and, as far as we are concerned, is incapable of solution. Fashion this mystery as you will, with that I have nothing to do. But let your conception of it not be an unworthy one. ”

“ For if the final goal of man has not been yet attained, if his development has not been yet arrested, who can say that such yearnings and questionings are not necessary to the opening of a finer vision, to the budding and the growth of diviner powers? Without this upward force could man have risen to his present height? When I look at the heavens and the earth, at my own body, at my strength and weakness of mind, even at these ponderings, and ask myself, Is there no being or thing in the universe that knows more about these matters than I do?—what is my answer? ”

“ The impression produced on our minds by that philosophical masterpiece will not be easily effaced. As we listened in that crowded hall with admiration to the thoughtful investigator who was unfolding to us the workings of a mind much more than ordinarily acute, we pictured to ourselves the effect which it was so well calculated to produce in the mind of the sceptic in science. We saw in imagination the victory of conscience and reason, the emancipation of a soul, the new birth of an intelligence. ”

“ As the cold increased I was fain to squeeze myself more and more underneath the ledge, so as to lessen the space of sky against which my body could radiate. Nothing could be more solemn than the night. Up from the valley came the low thunder of the Vispbach. Over the Dom flashed in succession the stars of Orion, until finally the entire constellation hung aloft. Higher up in heaven was the moon, and her beams as they fell upon the snow-fields and pyramids were sent back in silvery lustre by some, while others remained a dead white. ”

“ They best know that questions offer themselves to thought, which science, as now prosecuted, has not even the tendency to solve. They have as little fellowship with the atheist who says there is no God, as with the theist who professes to know the mind of God. 'Two things,' said Immanuel Kant, 'fill me with awe: the starry heavens, and the sense of moral responsibility in man.' And in his hours of health and strength and sanity, when the stroke of action has ceased, and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific investigator finds himself overshadowed by the same awe. ”

“ At our right now was a vertical wall of brown rock, along the base of which we advanced. At times we were sheltered by it, but not always; for the wind was as fitful as a maniac, and eddying round the corners sometimes shook us forcibly, chilled us to the marrow, and spit frozen dust in our faces. The snow, moreover, adjacent to the rock had been melted and refrozen to a steep slope of compact ice. The men were very weary, the hewing of the steps exhausting, and the footing, particularly on some glazed rocks over which we had to pass, exceedingly insecure. ”