ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 33 



our standards of time, infinite. They have further acquired 

 the idea that man is but one of innumerable forms of life 

 now existing on the globe, and that the present existences 

 are but the last of an immeasurable series of predecessors. 

 Moreover, every step they have made in natural knowledge 

 has tended to extend and rivet in their minds the conception 

 of a definite order of the universe — which is embodied in 

 what are called, by an unhappy metaphor, the laws of 

 Nature — and to narrow the range and loosen the force of 

 men's belief in spontaneity, or in changes other than such 

 as arise out of that definite order itself. 



Whether these ideas are well or ill founded is not the 

 question. No one can deny that they exist, and have been 

 the inevitable outgrowth of the improvement of natural 

 knowledge. And if so, it cannot be doubted that they are 

 changing the form of men's most cherished and most impor- 

 tant convictions. 



And as regards the second point — the extent to which the 

 improvement of natural knowledge has remodelled and 

 altered what may be termed the intellectual ethics of men, — 

 what are among the moral convictions most fondly held by 

 barbarous and semi-barbarous people. 



They are the convictions that authority is the soundest 

 basis of belief; that merit attaches to a readiness to believe; 

 that the doubting disposition is a bad one, and scepticism 

 a sin; that when good authority has pronounced what is to 

 be believed, and faith has accepted it, reason has no further 

 duty. There are many excellent persons who yet hold by 

 these principles, and it is not my present business, or inten- 

 tion, to discuss their views. All I wish to bring clearly 

 before your minds is the unquestionable fact, that the im- 

 provement of natural knowledge is effected by methods 



