MORAL EFFECTS OF SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. 303 



by the evidence which science furnished of the non-existence 

 of witchcraft. 



RELIGIOUS GOVERNMENT BECAME MORE HUMANE. 



But the belief in supernatural agency had also demoralised 

 men, clerical or lay : the contemplation of suffering had 

 blunted and even destroyed emotional instincts. Indifference 

 to acts of barbarity, familiarity with the spectacle of daily 

 cruelties, callousness at the sight of the infliction of torture, 

 insensibility to the natural affections had debased humanity 

 as it had never been since it had emerged from the lowest 

 condition of cannibalism.* 



The scientific demonstration of the permanence of natural 

 laws revived MEN'S GOOD INSTINCTS. 



One of the effects of the belief in witchcraft was of a 

 different kind. It had induced men to entertain a hatred 

 of all intellect and intellectual honesty ; f ' it had induced 

 a negation of everything that was good and noble in 

 morality.".* Provided a man believed, the rest did not 

 matter. Justification by faith, not by work, was the one 

 dogma which sanctified all acts hence denunciations, con- 

 fiscations, disabilities, imprisonments, tortures, and burnings. 

 Often, too often, alas ! faith was only a mask, and those 

 evils were perpetrated for private or corporate benefits 

 regardless of conscience the clergy seeking the gratifica- 

 tion of their greed for lucre and craving for power, the 

 laity the gratification of their passions. So long as the 

 victims were only heretics or persons suspected of heresy 

 or witchcraft, it mattered not. 



The promulgation of the doctrine of the permanency 

 of natural law restored mankind to a SENSE OF JUSTICE. 

 And likewise, the belief in the eternal damnation of all 

 but Christians also gave way to the teachings of science 

 and the intellectual elevation it brought in its train ; so 

 that science can boast of one of the greatest triumphs of 

 civilisation.* 



The intellectual movement originated by science had 

 other effects besides the decay and disappearance of religious 

 persecution. It gave a higher incentive to the performance 



* Mr. Leckv. 



