you have lost all hold on his moral and religious nature.
There is nothing bad men want to believe so much as that they are
governed by necessity. Now that which is at once degrading and dangerous
cannot be true."

"No doubt," the Doctor replied, "all large views of mankind limit our
estimate of the absolute freedom of the will. But I don't think it
degrades or endangers us, for this reason, that, while it makes us
charitable to the rest of mankind, our own sense of freedom, whatever it
is, is never affected by argument. _Conscience won't be reasoned with_.
We feel that _we_ can practically do this or that, and if we choose the
wrong, we know we are responsible; but observation teaches us that this
or that other race or individual has not the same practical freedom of
choice. I don't see how we can avoid this conclusion in the instance of
the American Indians. The science of Ethnology has upset a good many
theoretical notions about human nature."

"Science!" said the Reverend Doctor, "science! that was a word the
Apostle Paul did not seem to think much of, if we may judge by the
Epistle to Timothy: 'Oppositions of science falsely so called.' I own
that I am jealous of that word and the pretensions that go with
it. Science has seemed to me to be very often only the handmaid of
skepticism."

"Doctor!" the physician said, emphatically, "science is knowledge.
Nothing that is not _known_ properly belongs to science. Whenever
knowledge obliges us to doubt, we are always safe in doubting.
Astronomers foretell eclipses, say how long comets are to stay with us,
point out where a new planet is to be found. We see they _know_ what
they assert, and the poor old Roman Catholic Church has at last to knock
under. So Geology _proves_ a certain succession of events, and the best
Christian in the world must make the earth's history square with it.
Besides, I don't think you remember what great revelations of himself
the Creator has made in the minds of the men who have built up science.
You seem to me to hold his human masterpieces very cheap. Don't
you think the 'inspiration of the Almighty' gave Newton and Cuvier
'understanding'?"

The Reverend Doctor was not arguing for victory. In fact, what he
wanted was to call out the opinions of the old physician by a show of
opposition, being already predisposed to agree with many of them. He was
rather trying the common arguments, as one tries tricks of fence merely
to learn the way of par