NATURE OF HIS RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

Anecdote of a Swiss gentleman--Religious belief protects traditions,
but does not weaken the critical faculty itself--Illustration from the
art of etching--Sydney Smith--Dr. Arnold--Earnest religious belief of
Ampere--Comte and Sainte-Beuve--Faraday--Belief or unbelief proves
nothing for or against intellectual capacity.

I happened once to be travelling in Switzerland with an eminent citizen
of that country, and I remember how in speaking of some place we passed
through he associated together the ideas of Protestantism and
intellectual superiority in some such phrase as this: "The people here
are very superior; they are Protestants." There seemed to exist, in my
companion's mind, an assumption that Protestants would be superior
people intellectually, or that superior people would be Protestants;
and this set me thinking whether, in the course of such experience as
had fallen in my way, I had found that religious creed had made much
difference in the matter of intellectual acumen or culture.

The exact truth appears to be this. A religious belief protects this or
that subject against intellectual action, but it does not affect the
energy of the intellectual action upon subjects which are not so
protected. Let me illustrate this by a reference to one of the fine
arts, the art of etching. The etcher protects a copper-plate by means of
a waxy covering called etching-ground, and wherever this ground is
removed the acid bites the copper. The waxy ground does not in the least
affect the strength of the acid, it only intervenes between it and the
metal plate. So it is in the mind of man with regard to his intellectual
acumen and his religious creed. The creed may protect a tradition from
the operation of the critical faculty, but it does not weaken the
critical faculty itself. In the English Church, for example, the Bible
is protected against criticism; but this does not weaken the critical
faculty of English clergymen with reference to other literature, and
many of them give evidence of a strong critical faculty in all matters
not protected by their creed. Think of the vigorous common sense of
Sydney Smith, exposing so many abuses at a time when it needed not only
much courage but great originality to expose them! Remember the
intellectual force of Arnold, a great natural force if ever there was
one--so direct in action, so independent of contemporary opinion!
Intellectual forces