380 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



of experience has a father whose teachings are grave, 

 peremptory, and august ; and an earthborn rule may 

 be as stringent as any derived from a celestial source. 

 It does not even follow that a belief in the material 

 origin of spiritual existence, accompanied by a corre- 

 sponding decay of belief in immortality, must necessarily 

 lead to a relaxation of the moral fibre of the race. It 

 is certain that it has often done so. 1 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 

 prevented devotional fervour.' 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 cor- 

 roboration of my experience. 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 perfec- 

 tion.' 2 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 exist- 



1 Is this really certain ? Instead of standing in the relation of 

 cause and effect, may not the < decay ' and ' relaxation ' be merel 

 coexistent, both, perhaps, flowing from common historic antece 

 dents? 



Natural History of Atheism,' p. 136. 



