ntially the same. God's will is conceived of as disturbing the
automatic movements of matter without the skull, in just the same way as
man's will is conceived of as disturbing those of the brain within it.
Nor, though the alleged manifestations of the former do more violence to
the scientific imagination than do those of the latter, are they in the
eye of reason one whit more impossible. The erection of a pyramid at the
will of an Egyptian king would as much disturb the course of nature as
the removal of a mountain by the faith of a Galilean fisherman; whilst
the flooding of the Sahara at the will of a speculating company would
interfere with the weather of Europe far more than the most believing of
men ever thought that any answer to prayer would.

It will thus be seen that morality and religion are, so far as science
goes, on one and the same footing--of one and the same substance, and
that as assailed by science they either fall together or stand
together. It will be seen too that the power of science against them
resides not in itself, but in a certain intellectual fulcrum that we
ourselves supply it with. That its methods can discover no trace of
either of them, of itself proves nothing, unless we first lay down as a
dogma that its methods of discovery are the only methods. If we are
prepared to abide by this, there is little more to be said. The rest, it
is becoming daily plainer, is a very simple process; and what we have to
urge against religion will thenceforth amount to this. There is no
supernatural, because everything is natural; there is no spirit, because
everything is matter; or there is no air, because everything is earth;
there is no fire, because everything is water; a rose has no smell
because our eyes cannot detect any.

This, in its simplest form, is the so-called argument of modern
materialism. Argument, however, it is quite plain it is not. It is a
mere dogmatic statement, that can give no logical account of itself, and
must trust, for its acceptance, to the world's vague sense of its
fitness. The modern world, it is true, has mistaken it for an argument,
and has been cowed by it accordingly; but the mistake is a simple one,
and can be readily accounted for. The dogmatism of denial was formerly a
sort of crude rebellion, inconsistent with itself, and vulnerable in a
thousand places. Nature, as then known, was, to all who could weigh the
wonder of it, a thing inexplicable without some supernatural