80 HEREDITY. 



Has this discussion a practical bearing ? I can go 

 to twenty universities in the world, and find young 

 men asserting that one thing is just as divine as 

 another. Wrong is as natural as right, and what- 

 ever is natural is divine. The moral intuitions of 

 which the ethical teachers say so much are only one 

 part of nature ; the worst passions are another part ; 

 and what gives one portion of nature authority over 

 another? The bad man is brought forth by the 

 Supreme Powers, and the good man is; and, to a 

 consistent materialism, the one is just as divine as 

 the other. If I go to Tyndall and Hackel, they say 

 that the one is no more responsible than the other, 

 and that the will is never free. How are we to jus- 

 tify any thing like clearness of thought in ethical 

 philosophy, unless we can justify these fundamental 

 beliefs which materialism itself takes for granted, but 

 with which it plays fast and loose? These percep- 

 tions of primitive axioms are something not depend- 

 ing on any thing outside of us, but are original 

 capacities of the constitution of the soul, and would 

 have been the same, no matter what our experience 

 had been. When a doctrine works badly, I hold 

 that it is scientifically discredited as out of harmony 

 with the nature of things ; and this doctrine that the 

 fundamental beliefs are useless, or uncertain sources 

 of knowledge, works disastrously in the long range. 

 I do not mention these evil effects of denying self-evi- 

 dent truths as proof that our necessary beliefs are au- 

 thoritative ; but I use these effects to illustrate the 

 fact that there are practical issues involved of the most 



