MR. BALFOUR'S DIALECTICS. 333 



same time that his suggestions have been misleading or impracti- 

 cable, Reason obliges us to accept the first authority rather than 

 the second. And if we have to select one of two conflicting 

 masses of authority of the kind Mr. Balfour so well describes as 

 largely influencing our beliefs apart from Reason, we must deter- 

 mine their respective claims to our confidence in a similar way. 

 What are the authorities between which we have to choose ? 

 Briefly characterized, Mr. Balfour's book is a plea for Supernatu- 

 ralism versus Naturalism, and unless his section insisting on the 

 "beneficent part" which Authority plays in the production of 

 beliefs is without any raison d'etre, it is clear that the aggregate 

 of influences composing the authority which supports Religion is 

 set against the aggregate of influences by which Rationalism, con- 

 sidered by him as a form of authority, is supported. The au- 

 thorities which uphold Theology and Science respectively are the 

 two in question. Let us, then, observe what happens when we 

 test their relative values as we test the relative values of individ- 

 ual authorities. 



From the days when Chaldean priests began to record 

 eclipses, and after a time partially discovered the cycle they fol- 

 low, and were so enabled to foresee their recurrence with approxi- 

 mate truth, down to our own day, astronomical knowledge has 

 been growing ever more exact and more extensive, until now the 

 celestial motions are so perfectly known, that a transit of Venus 

 or an occultation of Jupiter by the moon, fulfills expectation to the 

 minute. So is it throughout : the previsions of the chemist hav- 

 ing reached such a stage that, foreseeing the possibility of an un- 

 known compound which must have certain properties, he proceeds 

 to form it, and creates a substance which has never before exist- 

 ed, answering to his anticipations. If from this ever-increasing 

 verification of scientific statements and inferences we turn to the 

 guidance Science has afforded, allied evidence everywhere sur- 

 rounds us. Led by Science mankind have progressed from boom- 

 erangs to 100-ton guns, from dug-out canoes to Atlantic liners, 

 from picture-writing on skins to morning journals printed twenty 

 thousand per hour ; and that over all the developed arts of life 

 Science now presides scarcely needs saying. 



With the Authority of Science, thus daily becoming greater, 

 contrast now the opposed Authority. Have the propositions con- 

 stituting current Theology been rendered more certain with the 

 passage of time and the advance of knowledge, or has the con- 

 trary happened ? Assyrian and Egyptian records, discovered of 

 late years, have, indeed, served to confirm certain statements con- 

 tained in the Bible ; and so have tended to verify the natural part 

 of the Hebrew story. But this yields no more reason for accept- 

 ing its supernatural part than does proof that there occurred the 



