1 2 o UNENQ UIRING BELIEF. 



The fact is, most readers are too busy, and few are 

 inclined to pause and carefully think over the statements 

 that are made, and which they are expected to believe, but 

 they read on apace, blindly accepting dictum after dictum, 

 and deluding themselves the while with the idea that their 

 understanding is appealed to and their reason satisfied. A 

 little examination, however, would in many instances have 

 sufficed to convince a thoughtful mind that the elementary 

 facts and fundamental arguments of the new philosophy 

 were hopelessly at fault. From the very commencement 

 of the enquiry the reader is expected to accept as proved 

 and to take for granted, things which have not been proved, 

 which cannot be proved, and which certainly will not be 

 proved during the lifetime of any one now living. 



Nor is this uninquiring belief in what purports to be 

 new philosophy, confined to the unscientific. For example, 

 not a few authorities express themselves as satisfied with 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer's doctrine of evolution, and consider 

 that it is really true; but then, strange as it may seem, 

 they accept, without enquiry and without critical examina- 

 tion, such statements as the following : " Organisms are 

 highly differentiated portions of the matter forming the 

 earth's crust and its gaseous envelope!" There are organ- 

 isms the matter of whose bodies is " distinguishable from 

 a fragment of albumen only by its finely granular charac- 

 ter !" A living being is only dead matter " variously modi- 

 fied." " The chasm between the inorganic and the organic 

 is being filled up." These and many other vague state- 

 ments of the kind are seized upon and assimilated not only 

 by imperfectly educated credulous enthusiasts, who consider 

 them overflowing with the deepest thought, but by some of 



