rian," but is altogether
"secular." The arguments which I have put before you to-night, for
example, are not inconsistent, so far as I know, with any form of
theology.

After much consideration, I thought that I might be most useful to you,
if I attempted to give you some vision of this Extrachristian world, as
it appears to a person who lives a good deal in it; and if I tried to
show you by what methods the dwellers therein try to distinguish truth
from falsehood, in regard to some of the deepest and most difficult
problems that beset humanity, "in order to be clear about their actions,
and to walk surefootedly in this life," as Descartes says.

It struck me that if the execution of my project came anywhere near the
conception of it, you would become aware that the philosophers and the
men of science are not exactly what they are sometimes represented to
you to be; and that their methods and paths do not lead so
perpendicularly downwards as you are occasionally told they do. And I
must admit, also, that a particular and personal motive weighed with
me,--namely, the desire to show that a certain discourse, which brought
a great storm about my head some time ago, contained nothing but the
ultimate development of the views of the father of modern philosophy. I
do not know if I have been quite wise in allowing this last motive to
weigh with me. They say that the most dangerous thing one can do in a
thunderstorm is to shelter oneself under a great tree, and the history
of Descartes' life shows how narrowly he escaped being riven by the
lightnings, which were more destructive in his time than in ours.

Descartes lived and died a good Catholic, and prided himself upon having
demonstrated the existence of God and of the soul of man. As a reward
for his exertions, his old friends the Jesuits put his works upon the
"Index," and called him an Atheist; while the Protestant divines of
Holland declared him to be both a Jesuit and an Atheist. His books
narrowly escaped being burned by the hangman; the fate of Vanini was
dangled before his eyes; and the misfortunes of Galileo so alarmed him,
that he well-nigh renounced the pursuits by which the world has so
greatly benefited, and was driven into subterfuges and evasions which
were not worthy of him.

"Very cowardly," you may say; and so it was. But you must make allowance
for the fact that, in the seventeenth century, not only did heresy mean
possible burning, or imprisonment, but