We spent 8d on naptha2 to distill water and then found that the great chemist outside3 carries on the same process in a wholesale way, and sold his article very cheap. What a magnificent chemist He is. If anyone wishes to appreciate him in that capacity let him go into his cellar kitchen, always taking care that mere names – sciences – do not hide from him the wonder, admiration and awe which belong to him. ‘We call that thunder of the black cloud Electricity and grind the like of it out of glass and silk, but what is it? What made it?? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? At bottom we do not yet know; we can never know at all’.4 I fancy I see you smile as you read this and learn that Tom has waded through a work of Carlyle’s at last. Aye, that I have, and I’ll soon swim through ‘Past and Present’.5 You will not consider it vanity or self-praise when I tell you that Carlyle’s Hero Worship6 has done me a power of good. I feel a different being to what I was. I have got a glimpse of that religion that exists apart from logic, that can receive no assistance from logic; in fact that mysterious ‘heart business’ you tried to drive into me. Before, I was trying to see the truth there was in different creeds and could only see a huge jumble of useless forms with no life, no meaning in them. I could not see – blind as I was – that there was a religion apart from them; in short I was beginning to think religion a nonentity, parsons licensed jugglers, and creeds things that we ought ‘to believe or to believe that we believe’7 because they were time honoured things and what our fathers are said to have believed.
Why could I not see that they were but symbols of this Religion, that can only be approached by such forms, that seems almost to defy all symbols? ‘As long as men did believe in these symbols they were right’.8 Yes, I have come to the conclusion that I am better as I am, that there is no good in my trying to believe that I believe, that at any rate I will not be guilty of idolatry.
T.H.
RI MS JT/2/13b/417-418
LT Transcript Only
[4 or 5 February] 1849: exact date of letter’s composition unknown. Tyndall received this letter on 6 February 1849 and transcribed it in his journal.
naptha: liquid petroleum (OED).
great chemist outside: i.e., God.
‘We call that ... know at all’: T. Carlyle, ‘Lecture I: The Hero as Divinity’, in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (London: James Fraser, 1841), p. 12: ‘We call that fire of the black thunder-cloud ‘electricity,’ and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it?’
‘Past and Present’: T. Carlyle, Past and Present (London: Chapman and Hall, 1843).
Hero Worship: T. Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (London: James Fraser, 1841).
‘to believe or to believe that we believe’: T. Carlyle, ‘Lecture IV: The Hero as Priest’, in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (London: James Fraser, 1841), p. 202: ‘A true man believes with his whole judgment, with all the illumination and discernment that is in him, and has always so believed. A false man, only struggling to “believe that he believes”, will naturally manage it in some other way.’
‘As long as men did believe in these symbols they were right’: not identified; possibly a reference to T. Carlyle, ‘Lecture IV: The Hero as Prophet’, in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (London: James Fraser, 1841), p. 102: ‘If the wild idolatrous men did believe this, and with their fiery hearts lay hold of it to do it, in what form soever it came to them, I say it was well worthy of being believed.’
Please cite as “Tyndall0369,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 25 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0369