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 that 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. 



