8o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



one resting on an immediately present consciousness, deeper than bis 

 belief in the uniformity of Nature ? I suppose not. Now, theolo- 

 gians are accustomed to assert, and I tbink with justice, that it is 

 impossible to entertain any belief whether it be only a working hy- 

 pothesis or something more in the uniformity of Nature, without 

 basing it on the irrefragable trustworthiness of the human faculties. 

 In one of our earliest discussions Dr. Ward proved his case that on 

 the irrefragable trustworthiness of memory, for example, for all facts 

 which it positively asserts, rests the whole structure of human knowl- 

 edge ; and this in a sense much deeper than any such expression as 

 " working hypothesis " will express. Without assuming this irre- 

 fragable trustworthiness, Dr. Ward has reminded us that I could not 

 now know that I am replying to Professor Huxley at all, or indeed 

 who I myself am, or who is Professor Huxley. Without absolutely 

 assuming the trustworthiness of memory, how should I have the least 

 glimmering of a conception of that expressive personality from whose 

 mouth the weighty utterances we have just heard proceeded ? Yet if 

 you grant me the trustworthiness of memory, when it speaks positive- 

 ly of a recent experience, can you deny me the trustworthiness of 

 other human faculties equally fundamental ? Is my "belief" in the 

 distinction between right and wrong, between holiness and sin, any 

 less trustworthy than my belief in the asseverations of my memory? 

 Did not Professor Huxley himself suggest in his closing remarks that 

 the moral roots of our nature strike deeper than the intellectual roots ; 

 in other words, that if memory be much more than a " working hy- 

 pothesis," if its trustworthiness be the condition without which no 

 working hypothesis would be even possible, there are moral conditions 

 of our nature quite as fundamental as even the trustworthiness of 

 memory itself ? I hold it, I confess, most irrational to have an abso- 

 lute and undoubting belief in the uniformity of Nature based on any 

 accumulation of experience, for no such accumulation of experience 

 is possible at all without an absolute and undoubting belief in the 

 past, and this no merely present experience can possibly give us. 

 And I hold such a belief in the uniformity of Nature, based on any- 

 thing but the trustworthiness of our faculties, to be irrational, for 

 precisely the same kind of reason for which I hold it to be irrational 

 to question the belief in God. The solemnity which Professor Hux- 

 ley attaches to the words " I believe," I attach to them also. More- 

 over, I could not use them in their fullest sense of anything which I 

 regard merely as a " working hypothesis," however fruitful. But I 

 deny that we theologians regard our deepest creed as a working hy- 

 pothesis at all. We accept the words " I believe in God," as we ac- 

 cept the words " I believe in the absolute attestations of memory," as 

 simply forced upon us by a higher intuition than any inductive law 

 can engender. When I say " I believe in God," I use the word be- 

 lieve just as I use it when I say "I believe in moral obligation," and 



