Light of Nature which, quaint and familiar as it may seem, is so much to the point that I cannot forbear from quoting it. Speaking of the grounds of our religious belief, the author rejects the common illustration of a building and the foundations on which it rests, as inappropriate to describe the real facts of the case. An apter comparison would be found, he thinks, in one of those Dutch buildings which rest, not on well-laid courses of brick or stone, but on an assemblage of many piles driven deep into a soft and yielding bank of mud and sand. It may better please the fancy to picture to ourselves a regular building towering in tier above tier of solid masonry, whose foundations we can assign, and can prove that they rest on the firm rock. But such a symmetrical structure is quite unsuitable to describe the circumstances in which we are actually placed.

(II) But again; not only are the facts upon which our conclusions rest thus infinite in number, they are also themselves far from possessing that simplicity which we commonly assign to them. Subject them to a high magnifying power and it will be found that they again are resolvable. What we call a simple fact is in great part the product of our judgment, and therefore often of our fancy, working upon very fragmentary data. What we do in observing a fact is to fill in an outline of which only a point here and there has been actually assigned, an outline therefore which may be no more obligatory than the shapes of the constellations on a celestial

globe. One man thinks that the points arrange themselves into the shape of a waggon, when to another they more naturally seem to fall into that of a bear. As this opens out to us a very important source of variations of judgment, and one which is seldom fully appreciated, I will give one or two simple illustrations of it.

ance.

We have all experienced the surprise, in going into a dark room, of seeing, as we think at first, some familiar object, which with more light, or after a closer scrutiny, seems entirely to change its appearIt may prove to be another object; perhaps no object at all, but a mere phantom composed of patches of light and shade. But the judgment at the time nevertheless seemed final; and had the attention been immediately called away we should never have guessed that the object was anything different from what we had at first taken it for. I am speaking, of course, not of spectral illusions, but of such common misjudgments as we are liable to any day of our lives. What amount of work the judgment or fancy had performed in such a case will be best appreciated by attempting afterwards to see the thing again as it had first appeared to us. For this purpose a real effort is required, and we are startled to find then how arbitrary and fantastic the spontaneous arrangement had been. In other words a little more light or a more careful inspection has altogether transformed what we were inclined to call our facts.

Take another equally simple illustration from

sounds. If a question is put in an unfamiliar dialect, or in a language which we do not know well, we may fail at first to extract the slightest vestige of meaning from any part of it. And yet the next time it is uttered, perhaps in almost precisely the same tone, we catch the meaning of it quite clearly. What were before mere fragments of sound have now coalesced and sprung into life. So much has been added by the mind, in the process of arrangement, that it seems afterwards as hard to rob the sounds of the meaning they have acquired, as it was before to confer any meaning upon them'.

Now this being the case with each separate inlet of knowledge, it will readily be seen what opening there is for differences of judgment and belief when several of these inlets have to be simultaneously employed. A slight disturbance, a little increase or depression in the portion contributed by any one of them, will often produce an immense alteration in the final result. The pilot in a storm may have to shape his judgment by an accurate estimate and correlation

1 "In aid of the present case, I will only remark, that it would appear incredible to persons not accustomed to these subtle notices of selfobservation, what small and remote resemblances, what mere hints of likeness from some real external object, especially if the shape be aided by colour, will suffice to make a vivid thought consubstantiate with the real object, and derive from it an outward perceptibility. Even when we are broad awake, if we are in anxious expectation, how often will not the most confused sounds of nature be heard by us as articulate sounds? For instance, the babbling of a brook will appear for a moment the voice of a friend for whom we are waiting, calling out our own names." Coleridge's Friend, I. 189. The principle is there applied in a very interesting way to account for Luther's vision of the devil in the tower at Wartburg.

of sights and sounds. Anything which affected the testimony of any one of these sources of knowledge on which he had to rely in the hurry of action, would have a most important bearing on his conduct. If the light grew more intense or the roar of the breakers increased, he would judge and consequently act differently.

You will now see how close is the connection between the two objections with which we started. They were, you remember, first, that each man's group of religious opinions is so liable to fluctuate; at one time seeming almost extinct, and at another fanned into intensity. Secondly, that the particular groups with which different men are furnished are so various. These phenomena have in part a common cause, and but for accidental circumstances would be found to vary with one another. Anything which tends to detach from a man's mind one class of the facts which combine in the aggregate to make up his proofs will of course diminish the amount of his conviction; but since it disturbs at the same time the proportion in which these proofs combined it will naturally alter the group of opinions held by him. And it would do this still more completely but for the fact that whereas we are almost entirely dependent upon our neighbours for the articles of our creed, we are mainly dependent upon ourselves for the degree of conviction with which we entertain them1

1 The above paragraph needs perhaps some expansion. What I mean is that if every person had the clearness of head and independence

I will pause a moment to indicate here an inference which will afterwards be drawn out more fully. Any theory of life, that is, any theory of our duty here and our destiny hereafter, must (if one may so say) be many-sided; it must take account of all sides of our nature, and neglect no class of circumstances in which men may be placed. Anything therefore that makes a man either neglect or unduly notice any of these circumstances, will disturb the

of judgment to work out his own religious creed for himself, we should find many more individual differences of belief than now prevail. We should not expect to find exactly the same creed, in all its minutiæ, prevailing over extensive areas of country, and entertained by people in very different circumstances. I am not here alluding to the case of those who take their doctrines upon authority; of course they cannot fail to agree; but of those who do attempt to argue and reflect. Even they, to some extent, think in groups; each tends to come into harmony with his neighbours; and those who deviate from custom seldom do more than take an old system and make some private alterations for themselves. I am far from thinking that they are wrong in thus acting; in fact, for reasons given in the third lecture and elsewhere, there are strong grounds for presuming that any one who neglects the help afforded by comparing his own convictions with those of others will fall into error, that is, on subjects which, like theology, do not admit of decisive experimental tests. But if we did think in theology, each for himself, more than we now do, I suspect that any one's emotional peculiarities would soon stamp their impress deeply on his dogmatic belief. Only one or two leading doctrines might be thus affected at first, but in any closely connected group of doctrines a difference insinuated at one point soon extends to others. Hence, in the case supposed, although the total range of variation could not well be greater than it now is, we should probably find that more differences would exist in any small group of individuals who had been brought up under similar influences. As things now are, the differences of emotional disposition of which we have to speak, expend nearly all their force in loosening or tightening our hold of the entire group of doctrines with which we start; there is still scarcely sufficient independence of judgment to enable them to reach so far as to break up the old group by detaching some of its parts and inserting others. The former moreover involves no trouble, the latter requires considerable attention and power of thought.

V. L.

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