so wonderful as the conservation of force, or the
indestructibility of matter. Whoso clearly appreciates
all that is implied in the falling of a stone can have
no difficulty about any doctrine simply on account of its
marvellousness. But the longer I live the more obvious it is
to me that the most sacred act of a man's life is to say
and to feel, "I believe such and such to be true." All the
greatest rewards, and all the heaviest penalties of existence,
cling about that act. The universe is one and the same
throughout; and if the condition of my success in unravelling
some little difficulty of anatomy or physiology is that I
shall rigorously refuse to put faith in that which does not
rest on sufficient evidence, I cannot believe that the great
mysteries of existence will be laid open to me on other terms.
It is of no use to talk to me of analogies and probabilities.
I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the
inverse square, and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon
weaker convictions. I dare not if I would.

From such a point of view intellectual veracity takes on a moral
aspect; indeed, it is a pillar of morality. Disregard of it has led
to incalculable social wrong and individual suffering, oppressions and
persecutions, unprogressive obscurantism, joined with perverted ideals
and intellectual arrest. "Ecrasez l'infâme," cried the reforming
Voltaire; his "infamous" was very much this perverting influence,
exaggerated and armed with power, which had made the great
organization of the Roman Church in his time a monstrous instrument of
autocratic tradition, cruel, rapacious, blindly intolerant, jealous
of light and liberty. In England the growth of political liberty had
deprived the darkest lights of the Church of almost all power for