55i 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



feeling on the subject. I am sure that in our rela- 

 tions with these Chinese we have acted scandal- 

 ously, and I would not have been a party to the 

 measures of violence which have been taken, if I 

 had not believed that I could work out of them 

 some good for them. Could I leave this, the real- 

 ly noblest part of my task, to be worked out by 

 others ? Any one could have obtained the Treaty 

 of Tientsin. What was really meritorious was, 

 that it should have been obtained at so small a 

 cost of human suffering. But this is also what dis- 

 credits it in the eyes of many, of almost all, here. 

 If we had carried on war for some years, if we had 

 carried misery and desolation all over the empire, 

 it would have been thought quite natural that the 

 emperor should have been reduced to accept the 

 terms imposed upon him at Tientsin. But to do 

 all this by means of a demonstration at Tientsin 1 

 The announcement was received with a yell of de- 

 rision by connoisseurs and baffled speculators in 

 tea" (page 280). 



" Have you read Bussell's book on the Indian 

 mutiny ? I have done so, and I recommend it to 

 you. It has made me very sad ; but it only con- 

 firms what I believed before respecting the scan- 



dalous treatment which the natives received at our 

 hands in India. I am glad that he has had courage 

 to speak out as he does on this point. . Can I do 

 anything to prevent England from calling down 

 on herself God's curse for brutalities committed 

 on another feeble Oriental race? Or are all my 

 exertions to result only in the extension of the 

 area over which Englishmen are to exhibit how 

 hollow and superficial are both their civilization 

 and their Christianity? The tone of the two or 

 three men connected with mercantile houses in 

 China, whom I find on board, is all for blood and 

 massacre on a great scale. I hope they will be 

 disappointed ; but it is not a cheerful or hopeful 

 prospect, look at it from what side one may " 

 (page 325). 



Lord Elgin, we repeat, was neither a pseudo- 

 philanthropist nor a patriot of every country but 

 his own ; he was wanting neither in British feel- 

 ing nor in courage ; and the records of his ex- 

 perience deserve attention, as well as the snort- 

 ings of the war-horses on the Stock Exchange and 



in Pall Mall. 



— Fortnightly Review. 



THE SKEPTICISM OF BELIEYEES. 



By LESLIE STEPHEN. 



NOT long ago an interesting question was 

 discussed by a respectable and presumably 

 competent meeting. Why, it was asked, does 

 not the spiritual warfare against the unbeliever 

 meet with greater success ? A " materialistic 

 atheism," as a high authority assured us, is " in 

 the air ; " and the malign contagion spreads in 

 spite of Bampton lecturers, Christian Evidence 

 Societies, and other apologetic machinery. At 

 all which it is hard not to exclaim, Sancta simpli- 

 citas! Can you really not guess this very open 

 secret ? Men die of many diseases ; creeds of 

 one — the disease of being found out. Do you 

 ever remember that David Hume died a century 

 ago, and that the matter which absorbs the in- 

 tellects of the most zealous part of the clergy at 

 the present day is the " eastward position ? " 

 When such a spectacle' as the Folkestone case is 

 presented to gods and men, what wonder that 

 unbelief spreads ? If a more articulate reply 

 were requested, one might perhaps say that the 

 old belief is perishing chiefly for two reasons : 

 first, because it has become a sham belief; sec- 

 ondly, because it is a negative belief. No man 

 can make converts who does not believe what he 



says ; nor will he, as a general rule, make them 

 rapidly, when his creed consists chiefly in deny- 

 ing the strongest and most fruitful convictions 

 of his neighbors. I shall not here inquire into 

 the first of these explanations ; but it may be 

 worth while briefly to defend the other, which, 

 indeed, is, at first sight, in greater need of de- 

 fense. 



It sounds paradoxical to declare that the or- 

 thodox belief is essentially skeptical. The infi- 

 del is popularly identified with the Mephistophe- 

 les, whose essence it is to deny. He denies, it is 

 said, a hereafter and a divine element in the 

 present. That denial implies the abandonment 

 of the most cheering hopes and highest aspira- 

 tions of mankind. To bring the charge of skep- 

 ticism against those who are fighting against ma- 

 terialism and atheism is at best to indulge in a 

 frivolous tu quoque. A parallel phrase, however, 

 is common on the lips of the orthodox. It is a 

 commonplace to taunt skeptics with credulity, 

 nor is the taunt without foundation. So long as 

 men of science continue to dabble in the filth of 

 "spiritualism" it will have a meaning. A con- 

 fessor is, after all, better than a medium ; and I 



