The passage from which these brief extracts are made is given at greater length in the additional note to this Section ([A]).
[c] Since writing the above, my attention has been called to Paley's censure of the "disingenuous form" under which Scepticism was placed before the public in his day. He says (Moral Philosophy, B. v. Sect. 9): "Infidelity is served up in every shape that is likely to allure, surprise, or beguile the imagination; in a fable, a tale, a novel, a poem; in interspersed and broken hints, remote and oblique surmises; in books of travels, of philosophy, of natural history; in a word, in any form rather than the right one,—that of a professed and regular disquisition. And because the coarse buffoonery and broad laugh of the old and rude adversaries of the Christian faith would offend the taste, perhaps, rather than the virtue of this cultivated age, a graver irony, a more skilful and delicate banter, is substituted in their place."
[d] "Atheists," says the Pall Mall Gazette of January 18, 1873, "write Atheism because they are Atheists, but Alexandre Dumas writes Atheism, though a good Catholic, who goes to church every Sunday."
[e] Pre-eminent amongst these remonstrants is Mr. Gladstone. In the speech before cited, he says, p. 25: "It is to be hoped that they will cause a shock and a reaction, and will compel many, who may have too lightly valued the inheritance so dearly bought for them, and may have entered upon dangerous paths, to consider, while there is yet time, whither those paths will lead them. In no part of his writings, perhaps, has Strauss been so effective, as where he assails the inconsistency of those who adopt his premises, but decline to follow him to their conclusions. Suffice it to say, these opinions are by no means a merely German brood; there are many writers of kindred sympathies in England, and some of as outspoken courage." (Compare the extracts from this class of writers given along with the Premier's remarks in Note [A].)
[f] Die Zustände eines Volkes hängen hauptsächlich von seiner Denkweise ab: diese ist der wichtigste und einflussreichste Zustand. Alle andern können nur nach und in ihr begriffen werden. Sie ist es, die den Menschen zu einem solchen macht; und in ihrer Ausbildung entwickelt sich erst die Menschlichkeit.—(Wilhelm H. J. Bleek, "Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache," p. 12).
[3] Cowper, "The Task," B. III.—It must be confessed that the honest-minded humanitarian may often find in the reception he encounters ample reason and motive enough for taking up Teufelsdroeckh's parable:—"'In vain thou deniest it,' says the Professor; 'thou art my Brother. Thy very hatred, thy very envy, those foolish lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humour: what is all this but an inverted sympathy? Were I a steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of me? Not thou! I should grind all unheeded, whether badly or well,'"—(Sartor Resartus, B. III. c. 7). And when the bigotry of Unbelief is not content with persecuting the honest-minded humanitarian—when he hears some shallow, half-animalized specimen of humanity shouting for a red-handed communism and the blood of the innocent—then he may not irrationally exclaim with the same philosopher:—"Wert thou, my little Brotherkin, suddenly covered up within the largest imaginable glass-bell,—what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but for the world!"
[g] I am indebted to Mr. Gladstone's appendix (p. 40) for the following apposite quotations from Sir George Cornewall Lewis's very scarce work, "On the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion." Speaking of "Authority, and its place not as an antagonist of Reason, but as an instrument of Reason for the attainment of Truth," Sir George remarks, in page 35 of his book: "'It is commonly said that the belief is independent of the will,' and that no man can change it 'by merely wishing it to be otherwise.' But 'the operation of a personal interest may cause a man insensibly to adopt prejudices or partial and unexamined opinions.' In page 38 he adds: 'Napoleon affords a striking instance of the corruption of the judgment in consequence of the misdirection of the moral sentiments.'"
All friends, and many casual readers, of S. T. Coleridge will remember that he asserted the same, or perhaps a stronger, conclusion upon metaphysical grounds, and with a force of language not easily surpassed. This—one of Coleridge's bursts of gorgeous eloquence and imagery—will be found in "The Friend," a book which, according to C. Lamb, contains "his best talk." The subject commences on page 260 of Vol. III., Ed. 2, and page 211, seq., Vol. III., Ed. 4. In the latter place it is amplified by a summary of his arguments, pages 213, 214. The position propounded, that true insight cannot exist apart from moral rectitude, receives considerable light from the doctrine of philosophical postulates maintained in the "Biographia Literaria," Vol. I. c. 12, and chiefly borrowed from Schelling, to whom there is an honest reference in the first Edition, I. 250. I mention this circumstance because Coleridge has been held guilty of unjustifiable pillage by writers who have noted his borrowing, but omitted to observe such acknowledgments as he makes, together with the additions and alterations which he introduces.
The corruption of a naturally acute understanding has seldom been more graphically painted than by Judge Talfourd. (See Additional Note, [B].)
[4] Compare Lord Macaulay on "Special Pleading in History," Additional Note, [C].