ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE LOGIC OF SCIENCE. 9 



assent, and let the faithful be required to accept all these propositions, 

 in order to segregate them as radically as possible from the influence 

 of the rest of the world. 



This method has, from the earliest times, been one of tbe chief 

 means of upholding correct theological and political doctrines, and 

 of preserving their universal or catholic charactei-. In Rome, espe- 

 cially, it has been practised from the days of Numa Pompilius to 

 those of Pius Nonus. This is the most perfect example in history ; 

 but wherever there is a priesthood and no religion has been without 

 one this method has been more or less made use of. Wherever 

 there is an aristocracy, or a guild, or any association of a class of 

 men whose interests depend or are supposed to depend on certain 

 propositions, there will be inevitably found some traces of this natu- 

 ral product of social feeling. Cruelties always accompany this sys- 

 tem ; and when it is consistently carried out, they become atrocities 

 of the most horrible kind in the eyes of any rational man. Nor 

 should this occasion surprise, for the officer of a society does not feel 

 justified in surrendering the interests of that society for the sake of 

 mercy, as he might his own private interests. It is natural, there- 

 fore, that sympathy and fellowship should thus produce a most ruth- 

 less power. 



In judging this method of fixing belief, which may be called the 

 method of authority, we must, in the first place, allow its immeasur- 

 able mental and moral superiority to the method of tenacity. Its 

 success is proportionately greater ; and, in fact, it has over and over 

 again worked the most majestic results. The mere structures of 

 stone which it has caused to be put together in Siam, for example, 

 in Egypt, and in Europe have many of them a sublimity hardly 

 more than rivaled by the greatest works of Nature. And, except 

 the geological epochs, there are no periods of time so vast as those 

 which are measured by some of these organized faiths. If we scru- 

 tinize the matter closely, we shall find that there has not been one 

 of their creeds which has remained always the same ; yet the change 

 is so slow as to be imperceptible during one person's life, so that 

 individual belief remains sensibly fixed. For the mass of mankind, 

 then, there is perhaps no better method than this. If it is their 

 highest impulse to be intellectual slaves, then slaves they ought to 

 remain. 



But no institution can undertake to regulate opinions upon every 

 subject. Only the most important ones can be attended to, and on 

 the rest men's minds must be left to the action of natural causes. 

 This imperfection will be no source of weakness so long as men are in 

 such a state of culture that one opinion does not influence another 

 that is, so long as they cannot put two and two together. But in the 

 most priestridden states some individuals will be found who are 

 raised above that condition. These men possess a wider sort of social 



