MR. MALLOCK ON OPTIMISM. 533 



of the same period. The considerations which moved our ancestors 

 to belief do not and can not move us ; and, therefore, so far as the 

 theology in question furnished an interpretation of the world or 

 a guide to conduct, men who can not now accept it are compelled 

 to look around for other canons, other sanctions, other modes of 

 arriving at truth. The thinkers of this age have not deliberately 

 made this situation for themselves. The change has come, upon 

 the whole, very gradually ; and human beings are every day being 

 born into an atmosphere in which the ideas that were current in 

 the earlier centuries simply can not live unless in some manner 

 artificially protected. The difference between our time and the 

 former age consists mainly in this, that educated men have now 

 something like an adequate idea of what knowledge is, and of 

 what proof is, and that they have got into the way of asking for 

 proof before they yield belief. That this was not formerly the 

 case — that men believed for the most fantastic and ridiculous 

 reasons — could be abundantly proved if necessary ; but surely it 

 is not necessary. The task, then, which is assigned by dogmatic 

 theology to this generation is to believe without those aids to be- 

 lief which the more habitual supernaturalism of our more igno- 

 rant ancestors supplied. Some try to do it and succeed, making 

 ends meet by ways and means best known to themselves. Some 

 try and do not succeed ; and some feel dispensed from trying at 

 all. Monotheism it must be remembered was not a special reve- 

 lation to mankind. There are good grounds for the belief that, in 

 every case it has resulted from the consolidation of an antecedent 

 polytheism ; while polytheism itself has been a delusion forced 

 upon men's minds by the countless activities in nature which they 

 have been powerless to explain to themselves in any other way. 

 The time has come at length when, as an explanation of nature, 

 monotheism itself has lost its virtue ; not because there are not 

 many dark problems still to be solved, but because monotheism is 

 recognized as rather the assumption of a solution than a solution. 

 Men, even those who view things in this light, may still be theists, 

 but intelligent men at least are not theists merely because they 

 can not understand everything in nature. Their reasons are of a 

 different order. 



Instead, therefore, of there being anything in the condition of 

 men's minds to-day or in the average philosophy of the time to 

 provoke ridicule or hostile comment, there is much that calls for 

 every allowance and consideration. The science, the history, the 

 philosophy, the political and social organization of the past are dis- 

 credited. Its theology is discredited, too, and men are engaged in 

 a strenuous effort to lay new foundations and rear worthier super- 

 structures in every department of thought. The workers, happily 

 for themselves and for the world, are not all brigaded and dra- 



