"Mighty fine! but I don't like secondary conscience; a first conscience is, in my opinion, a better thing," said Godfrey.
"You may have that too," said Rosamond.
"Too! but I'd rather have it alone," said Godfrey. "There is something so cowardly in not daring to stand alone."
The lesson seems to be that second-hand goodness falls short of true goodness, and that the impulse to moral action must arise from within—so unmanly is every endeavour at shaking off, either by cowardice or by unreflectiveness, the human burden and birthright of Responsibility.
Amurath's ring was a mechanical conscience. Professor Huxley's clock is a mechanism in the outward form of a man. These two imaginations convey the useful lessons that neither Conscience nor Mankind are mere machines. A clock goes because it must go its hourly round; a man chooses which way, when, and whither he will go.
[12] 1 Corinthians ix. 16.
[13] For a useful account of Plato's Dialogue in connection with Plato's philosophy, see "Introduction to the Republic," by Davies and Vaughan, pp. xxi.-xxiv. Cambridge, 1852.
[14] See more particularly Chapter V., "Production and its Law."
[15] Most literary people are aware that it was borrowed by Paley himself. A reference very accessible to ordinary readers may be made to Knight's English Cyclopædia, Article Nieuwentyt. "A work," says the biographer, "was published by him at Amsterdam in 1715, in one volume 4to, entitled 'The right use of Contemplating the Works of the Creator': the object of the author is first to convince atheists of the existence of a supreme and benevolent Creator, by contemplating the mechanism of the heavens, the structure of animals, etc.; and, secondly, to remove the doubts of deists concerning revealed religion. It was originally published in Dutch, but has passed through several editions, in German, French, and English. The English editions, translated by Chamberlayne, under the title of the 'Religious Philosopher,' appeared at London in 1718-19 and 1730, in three vols. 8vo. This work, as was first pointed out in the Athenæum for 1848, pp. 803, 907, 930, served as the basis for Paley's 'Natural Theology,' the general argument and many of the illustrations in that remarkable work being directly copied—and without the slightest acknowledgment, though Paley was acquainted with the book—from the 'Religious Philosopher.'"
Lord Brougham, who does not appear to have seen Bernard Nieuwentyt's book, believes that Derham supplied the fountain from which Paley drank so freely. Apparently he used both.