so many belated dogmatists, neatly turning the tables on their
predecessors by using the criterion of origin in a destructive
instead of an accreditive way.

They are effective with their talk of pathological origin only so
long as supernatural origin is pleaded by the other side, and
nothing but the argument from origin is under discussion. But
the argument from origin has seldom been used alone, for it is
too obviously insufficient. Dr. Maudsley is perhaps the
cleverest of the rebutters of supernatural religion on grounds of
origin. Yet he finds himself forced to write:--

"What right have we to believe Nature under any obligation to do
her work by means of complete minds only? She may find an
incomplete mind a more suitable instrument for a particular
purpose. It is the work that is done, and the quality in the
worker by which it was done, that is alone of moment; and it may
be no great matter from a cosmical standpoint, if in other
qualities of character he was singularly defective--if indeed he
were hypocrite, adulterer, eccentric, or lunatic. . . . Home we
come again, then, to the old and last resort of certitude--namely
the common assent of mankind, or of the competent by instruction
and training among mankind."[5]

[5] H. Maudsley: Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings,
1886, pp. 256, 257.



In other words, not its origin, but THE WAY IN WHICH IT WORKS ON