4?0 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
what is good and true in both our arguments will be pre- 
served for the benefit of humanity, while all that is bad or 
false will disappear." 
I hold the bishop's reasoning to be unanswerable, and 
his liberality to be worthy of imitation. 
It is worth remarking that in one respect the bishop was 
a product of his age. Long previous to his day the nature 
of the soul had been so favorite and general a topic of dis- 
cussion, that, when the students of the Italian universities 
wished to know the leanings of a new professor, they at 
once requested him to lecture upon the soul. About the 
time of Bishop Butler the question was not only agitated 
but extended. It was seen by the clear-witted men who 
entered this arena, that many of their best arguments 
applied equally to brutes and men. The bishop's argu- 
ments were of this character. He saw it, admitted it, took 
the consequence, and boldly embraced the whole animal 
world in his scheme of immortality. 
SECTION" 6. Bishop Butler accepted with unwavering 
trust the chronology of the Old Testament, describing it 
as " confirmed by the natural and civil history of the 
world, collected from common historians, from the state of 
the earth, and from the late inventions of arts and 
sciences." These words mark progress; and they must 
seem somewhat hoary to the bishop's successors of to-day. 
It is hardly necessary to inform you that since his time 
the domain of the naturalist has been immensely extended 
the whole science of geology, with its astounding 
revelations regarding the life of the ancient earth, having 
been created. The. rigidity of old conceptions has been 
relaxed, the public mind being rendered gradually tolerant 
of the idea fchat not for six thousand, nor for sixty thousand, 
nor for six thousand thousand, but for aeons embracing 
untold millions of years, this earth has been" "the theater of 
life and death. The riddle of the rocks has been read by 
the geologist and palaeontologist, sub-cambrian depths to 
the deposits thickening over the sea-bottoms of to-day. 
And upon the leaves of that stone book are, as you know, 
stamped the characters, plainer and surer than those 
formed by the ink of history, which carry the mind back 
into abysses of past time, compared with which the periods 
which satisfied Bishop Butler cease to have a visual angle. 
