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 lias 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." J 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 schoolwork, 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 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. 



