222 SCEPTICISM AND CREDULITY. 



mental quality it is ever, the same, and ever preyed 

 upon by similar arts and impostures. In our own age 

 the grim romance of the ghost-story has been succeeded 

 by the coarser follies of spirit-rapping, table-turning, 

 &c., all fastening upon that particular temperament 

 among mankind which is ever ready to accept belief 

 without weighing the evidence for it even more ready, 

 it might seem, where the things propounded are most 

 incredible. The sense implied in the phrase, ' Credo 

 quia impossibile est,' must not be confined to doctrinal 

 divinity alone. 



The sobriety and hard logic of the sceptical tem- 

 perament come in natural correction of the feebleness 

 or intemperance of credulity ; and in some sort indeed 

 they are mutually corrective, and knowledge gains 

 from the conflict. For scepticism itself is sometimes 

 largely in excess, and becomes a hindrance to minds 

 otherwise powerful in seeking for truth. Dr. Wollas- 

 ton, whom I well knew, was a striking instance of this. 

 With high intellectual powers, with leisure and other 

 appliances at command, he shut himself out from great 

 discoveries at a period fertile of such by a morbid 

 demand for certainty at every step of progress. The 

 story connected with his discovery of palladium is well 

 known. His was a mind that would never give to 

 probabilities or hypotheses their due weight in scien- 

 tific enquiry. The record we have of D'Alenibert, in 

 his life and writings, furnishes another striking example 

 of this sceptical temperament. Devoted to mathe- 

 matical proof, he could discern nothing of truth or 

 reality, beyond or outside, unless through deinonstra- 



