400 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



finer endowments of human character, are to be ranked 

 with the unendowed, I should find some characteristic 

 samples among the noisier defenders of the orthodox be- 

 lief. These, however, are but "hand-specimens" on both 

 sides ; the wider data referred to by Professor Knight con- 

 stitute, therefore, a welcome corroboration of my experi- 

 ence. Again, my excellent critic, Professor Blackie, de- 

 scribes Buddha as being "a great deal more than a 

 prophet; a rare, exceptional, and altogether transcenden- 

 tal incarnation of moral perfection." 1 And yet, "what 

 Buddha preached was a gospel of pure human ethics, 

 divorced not only from Brahma and the Brahminic Trin- 

 ity, but even from the existence of Grod." a These civil- 

 ized and gallant voices from the North contrast pleasantly 

 with the barbarous whoops which sometimes come to us 

 along the same meridian. 



Looking backward from my present standpoint over the 

 earnest past, a boyhood fond of play and physical action, 

 but averse to school work, lies before me. The aversion 

 did not arise from intellectual apathy or want of appetite 

 for knowledge, but simply from the fact that my earliest 

 teachers lacked the power of imparting vitality to what 

 they taught. Athwart all play and amusement, however, 

 a thread of seriousness ran through my character; and 

 many a sleepless night of my childhood has been passed, 

 fretted by the question "Who made Grod?" I was well 

 versed in Scripture; for I loved the Bible, and was 

 prompted by that love to commit large portions of it to 

 memory. Later on I became adroit in turning my Script- 



1 "Natural History of Atheism," p. 13. * Ibid., p. 125. 



