12 1 
analogies were used as arguments in connection witli religion, 
reason would not be slow to object. 
27. He is not more happy in his effort when he is dealing 
with ratiocination. “ Now ratiocination,” he says, “is re- 
solvable into predication, and predication consists in marking in 
some way the existence, the co-existence, the succession, the 
likeness and unlikeness . of things or their ideas. Whatever 
does this reasons ; and if a machine produces the effects of 
reason, I see no more grounds for denying to it the reasoning 
power because it is unconscious, than I see for refusing to 
Mr. Babbage^s engine the title of a calculating machine on the 
same grounds.” And so the greyhound and the gamekeeper 
essentially resemble each other, and a calculating machine is 
equal to both. One need not wonder at the tendency of all 
such teaching to exclude religion ; for all moral agency, 
accountability, and possibility of spiritual experience is excluded. 
Mental and moral life is simply a bit of clockwork. Indeed, 
this is the very kind of life he longs for, notwithstanding the 
protest which the mental instincts have raised. He has ex- 
pressed the wish that some power would always make him 
think what is true, and do what is right, on condition of being 
turned into a sort^of clock, and wound up every morning before 
£ 0 %, 0U ^ ^ eG > and he says if such a power were to make 
U 1 should instantly close with the offer.” It is 
^It to see what he can mean by the “true” and the 
13 SUC k a s ^ e things. The bee and the beaver do 
not falsify the true, nor violate the right. Nor does the 
monkey. How comes it that man does it ? And what kind 
ot existence would that be in which the power of doing so is 
not possessed ? A mechanical morality would be a peculiar 
nng, giving one no trouble, taking away all responsibility, 
ana making a man simply a writing or lecturing clock. And 
yet if the doctrine of materialism be true, he has his wish : for 
logically, one thing will be as true and right as another, and 
he great power that winds him up, does so without any reason 
at ail for so doing. Science has surely glories enough of her 
own ^ to arrest attention and maintain her claims upon our 
wonder and respect, without seeking to array herself in glories 
that are false, or assuming attitudes of hostility to truths that 
are more important than her own. When, however, she claims 
a monopoly of reason, she is guilty of such a false attitude, and 
ambitious of such a false glory. 
28. But reason has some place in the question of immortality 
as m that of God and the moral responsibility of the soul. 
Buchner, who is consistent enough to carry his principles 
o their logical conclusions, says, “ the more we free ourselves 
k 2 
