45o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



neighbors across the Channel call it, clericalism, there can be 

 neither peace nor truce. The cleric asserts that it is morally 

 wrong not to believe certain propositions, whatever the results of 

 a strict scientific investigation of the evidence of these proposi- 

 tions. He tells us that " religious error is, in itself, of an immoral 

 nature."* He declares that he has prejudged certain conclu- 

 sions, and looks upon those who show cause for arrest of judg- 

 ment as emissaries of Satan. It necessarily follows that, for him. 

 the attainment of faith, not the ascertainment of truth, is the 

 highest aim of mental life. And, on careful analysis of the na- 

 ture of this faith, it will too often be found to be not the mystic 

 process of unity with the divine, understood by the religious 

 enthusiast — but that which the candid simplicity of a Sunday 

 scholar once defined it to be. "Faith," said this unconscious 

 plagiarist of Tertullian, "is the power of saying you believe 

 things which are incredible." 



Now I, and many other agnostics, believe that faith, in this 

 sense, is an abomination ; and though we do not indulge in the 

 luxury of self-righteousness so far as to call those who are not of 

 our way of thinking hard names, we do feel that the disagree- 

 ment between ourselves and those who hold this doctrine is even 

 more moral than intellectual. It is desirable there should be an 

 end of any mistakes on this topic. If our clerical opponents were 

 clearly aware of the real state of the case, there would be an end 

 of the curious delusion, which often appears between the lines of 

 their writings, that those whom they are so fond of calling " infi- 

 dels " are people who not only ought to be, but in their hearts 

 are, ashamed of themselves. It would be discourteous to do more 

 than hint the antipodal opposition of this pleasant dream of theirs 

 to facts. 



The clerics and their lay allies commonly tell us that, if we 

 refuse to admit that there is good ground for expressing definite 

 convictions about certain topics, the bonds of human society will 

 dissolve and mankind lapse into savagery. There are several 

 answers to this assertion. One is, that the bonds of human 

 society were formed without the aid of their theology, and in 

 the opinion of not a few competent judges have been weakened 

 rather than strengthened by a good deal of it. Greek science, 

 Greek art, the ethics of old Israel, the social organization of old 

 Rome, contrived to come into being without the help of any one 

 who believed in a single distinctive article of the simplest of the 

 Christian creeds. The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the 

 chief political and social theories of the modern world have 

 grown out of those of Greece and Rome — not by favor of, but in 

 the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to 

 * Dr. Newman, " Essay on Development," p. 357. 



