Professor Tyndall concluded his lecture by a passage on the
de- velopment theory, in which he contended that if our traditional view of matter had been Goethe's view, that matter is "the living gar- ment of God," instead of Young's, who looked upon it as foreign to mind, and taking all its laws from outside itself, the development theory would not seem to us what we now mean by materialistic. The Pall Mall falls severely on Professor Tyndall for misquoting Goethe, and shows that the passage in " Faust " probably referred to, where the Erdgeist speaks of weaving a "living garment for the divinity," did not refer to external nature at all. No doubt
the special quotation was a little wide of the mark, but does the critic
in the Pall Mall doubt that Professor Tyndall was interpreting quite accurately Goethe's conception, as elsewhere expressed with sufficient elaboration ? If he does not, his criticism is a cavil. If he does, let him study Goethe more thoroughly,—" Gott und Welt," for example, of the proem to which a friend has sent us a faithful version to-day, which we print in another column. What can be stronger than this ?— ,,Was sin Gott der mu- von anssen stiesse Ina Sreie daft All am Finger laufen hese° ! Ihm ziemt's, die Welt im Innern zn bewegen, Natur in Sicb, Sich in Natnr zu hegen."
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