do not force such persons to wear a cowl of lead. Do not you meddle with
what we teach or write, and then we will not dispute the common people
with you; do not contest our place in the school and the academy, and
then we will surrender to your hands the country school.'[6] This is
only a very courageous and definite way of saying what a great many less
accomplished persons than M. Renan have silently in their hearts, and in
England quite as extensively as in France. They do not believe in hell,
for instance, but they think hell a useful fiction for the lower
classes. They would deeply regret any change in the spirit or the
machinery of public instruction which would release the lower classes
from so wholesome an error. And as with hell, so with other articles of
the supernatural system; the existence of a Being who will distribute
rewards and penalties in a future state, the permanent sentience of each
human personality, the vigilant supervision of our conduct, as well as
our inmost thoughts and desires, by the heavenly powers; and so forth.

Let us discuss this matter impersonally, without reference to our own
opinions and without reference to the evidence for or against their
truth. I am not speaking now of those who hold all these ideas to be
certainly true, or highly probable, and who at the same time
incidentally insist on the great usefulness of such ideas in confirming
morality and producing virtuous types of character. With such persons,
of course, there is no question of a dual doctrine. They entertain
certain convictions themselves, and naturally desire to have their
influence extended over others. The proposition which we have to
consider is of another kind. It expresses the notions of those who--to
take the most important kind of illustration--think untrue the popular
ideas of supernatural interference in our obscure human affairs; who
think untrue the notion of the prolongation of our existence after death
to fulfil the purpose of the supernatural powers; or at least who think