d arguments should be
allowed to produce the exact degree of influence to which as opinions and
arguments they are entitled: they should be permitted to stand upon their
own intrinsic merits alone, and quite beyond the shadow of that unfair
prejudication which cannot but arise so soon as their author's authority,
or absence of authority, becomes known. Notwithstanding this avowal,
however, I fear that many who glance over the following pages will read in
the "Physicus" of the first one a very different motive. There is at the
present time a wonderfully wide-spread sentiment pervading all classes of
society--a sentiment which it would not be easy to define, but the
practical outcome of which is, that to discuss the question of which this
essay treats is, in some way or other, morally wrong. Many, therefore, who
share this sentiment will doubtless attribute my reticence to a puerile
fear on my part to meet it. I can only say that such is not the case.
Although I allude to this sentiment with all respect--believing as I do
that it is an offshoot from the stock which contains all that is best and
greatest in human nature--nevertheless it seems to me impossible to deny
that the sentiment in question is as unreasonable as the frame of mind
which harbours it must be unreasoning. If there is no God, where can be the
harm in our examining the spurious evidence of his existence? If there is a
God, surely our first duty towards him must be to exert to our utmost, in
our attempts to find him, the most noble faculty with which he has endowed
us--as carefully to investigate the evidence which he has seen fit to
furnish of his own existence as we investigate the evidence of inferior
things in his dependent creation. To say that there is one rule or method
for ascertaining truth in the latter case, which it is not legitimate to
apply in the former case, is merely a covert way of saying that the Deity,
if he exists, has not supplied us with rational evidence of his existence.
For my own part, I feel that such an assertion cannot but embody far more
unworthy conceptions of a Personal God than are represented by any amount
of earnest inquiry into whatever evidence of his existence there may be
present; but, neglecting this reflection, if there is a God, it is certain
that reason is the faculty by which he has enabled man to discover truth,
and it is no less certain that the scientific methods have proved
themselves by far the most trustworth