PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION, 631 
race. It is certain that it has often done so.* But it is 
equally certain that there have been individuals, and great 
historical communities, in which the absence of the latter 
belief has neither weakened moral earnestness, nor pre- 
vented devotional fervor." I have elsewhere stated that 
some of the best men of my acquaintance men lofty in 
thought and beneficent in" act belong to a class who 
assiduously let the belief referred to alone. They derive 
from it neither stimulus nor inspiration, while I say it 
with regret were I in quest of persons who, in regard to 
the 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 
belief. These, however, are but " hand-specimens " on 
both sides; the wider data referred to by Professor Knight 
constitute, therefore, a welcome corroboration of my ex- 
perience. Again, my excellent critic, Professor Blackie, 
describes Buddha as being "a great deal more than a 
prophet; a rare, exceptional, and altogether transcendental 
.incarnation of moral perfection."! And yet, "what 
\Buddha preached was a gospel of pure human ethics,' 
divorced not only from Brahma and the Brahminic Trinity, 
but even from the existence of God. " l\ These civilized 
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 rny character; arid 
many a sleepless night of my childhood has been passed, 
fretted by the question "Who made God?" I was well 
* Is this really certain? Instead of standing in the relation of cause 
and effect, may not the "decay" and "relaxation" be merely 
coexistent, both, perhaps, flowing from common historic antecedents? 
f " Natural History of Atheism," p. 136, 
% Ibid., p. 125. 
