Mr. Buckles Fallacies. 189 



on a long and thorough investigation into the 

 laws of the natural world. Giving up as hope 

 less all search for the undiscoverable, all striving 

 to know the unknowable, science contents itself 

 with finding out that which lies within our reach. 

 But it was not in the power of man, on first per 

 ceiving the inadequacy and incongruity of his old 

 belief, to pass at once to the new. No one can 

 reject an old system of opinions, which has shaped 

 his thoughts and guided his actions in the past, 

 and then take up a new system, to shape his 

 thoughts and guide his actions in the future, with 

 out going through an intermediate state of pain 

 ful and wearisome doubt. As with the individ 

 ual, so with the race. The sceptical period could 

 not but intervene. It was only after countless 

 attempts to explore the dark and dangerous re 

 gion of the Infinite had all proved futile it was 

 only after successive theories had all been weighed 

 in the balance, and found wanting that man 

 could come at last to repose in the calm spirit and 

 sure methods of scientific inquiry. Before this 

 must necessarily have come that tumultuous sea 

 son of doubt and denial, of discord and revolu 

 tion, in which the sceptical spirit reigned su 

 preme. The rottenness of old institutions, forms 

 and dogmas, had to be exposed before they could 



