THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. gy 



stration of the earth's roundness; the discovery of 

 America; the growing conception of inter-relation 

 between the lowest and the highest life-forms; the 

 slow but sure acceptance of the Copernican theory; 

 and, above all, the idea of a Cosmos, an unbroken 

 order, to which every advance in knowledge con- 

 tributes, justified and fostered the free play of the 

 intellect. Foreign as yet, however, to the minds of 

 widest breadth, was the conception of the inclusion 

 of Man himself in the universal order. Duality — 

 Nature overruled by supernature — was the unaltered 

 note; the supernature as part of Nature a. thing un- 

 dreamed of. Nor could it be otherwise while the 

 belief in diabolical agencies still held the field, send- 

 ing wretched victims to the stake on the evidence 

 of conscientious witnesses, and with the concurrence 

 of humane judges. Animism, the root of all per- 

 sonification, whether of good or evil, had lost none 

 of its essential character, and but little of its vigour. 

 " I flatter myself," says Hume, in the opening 

 words of the essay upon Miracles, in his Inquiry 

 Concerning Human Understanding, " that I have 

 discovered an argument of a like nature (he is refer- 

 ring to Archbishop Tillotson's argument on Tran- 

 substantiation) which, if just, will, with the wise and 

 learned, be an everlasting check to all kind of super- 

 stitious delusion, and, consequently, will be useful 

 as long as the world endures." Hume certainly did 

 not overrate the force of the blow which he dealt at 

 supernaturalism, one of a series of attacks which, in 



