shorthand idealism. This essay, too, contains the often-quoted
passage, apropos of the] "introduction of Calvinism into science."

I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always 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 I got out of bed, I
should instantly close with the offer. The only freedom I care about
is the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part
with on the cheapest terms to any one who will take it of me.

[This was the latest of the essays included in "Lay Sermons, Addresses
and Reviews," which came out, with a dedicatory letter to Tyndall, in
the summer of 1870, and, whether on account of its subject matter or
its title, always remained his most popular volume of essays.

To the same period belongs a letter to Matthew Arnold about his book
"St. Paul and Protestantism."]

My dear Arnold,

Many thanks for your book which I have been diving into at odd times
as leisure served, and picking up many good things.

One of the best is what you say near the end about science gradually
conquering the materialism of popular religion.

It will startle the Puritans who always coolly put the matter the
other way; but it is profoundly true.

These people are for the most part mere idolaters with a Bible-fetish,