the accuracy
of the phrase) 'a peculiarly placid turn of mind.' He admits that a
desire for knowledge is right and inevitable, but all experience shows
our fallibility and the narrow limits of our knowledge. We know,
however, that 'we are bound together by innumerable ties, and that
almost every act of our lives deeply affects our friends' happiness.'
The belief again (in the sense always of belief of a probability) in the
fundamental doctrines of God and a future state imposes an 'obligation
to be virtuous, that is, to live so as to promote the happiness of the
whole body of which I am a member. Is there,' he asks, 'anything
illogical or inconsistent in this view?'

At any rate, it explains his 'moral indignation' against Roman
Catholicism. In the first place, Catholicism claims 'miraculous
knowledge' where there should be an honest confession of ignorance. This
original vice has made it 'to the last degree dishonest, unjust, and
cruel to all real knowledge.' It has been the enemy of government on
rational principles, of physical science, of progress in morals, of all
knowledge which tends to expose its fundamental fallacies. Its
theological dogmas are not only silly but immoral. The doctrines of
hell, purgatory, and so forth, are not 'mysteries,' but perfectly
unintelligible nonsense, first representing God as cruel and arbitrary,
and then trying to evade the consequence by qualifications which make
the whole 'a clumsy piece of patchwork.' God the Father becomes a 'stern
tyrant,' and God the Son a 'passionate philanthropist.' Practically his
experience has confirmed this sentiment. He does 'really and truly love,
at all events, a large section of mankind, though pride and a love of
saying sharp things have made me, I am sorry to say, sometimes write as
if I did not,' and whatever he has tried to do, he has found the Roman
Catholic Church 'lying straight across his path.' Men who are
intellectually his inferiors and morally 'nothing at all extraordinary,'
have ordered him to take for granted their views upon law, morals, and
philosophy, and when he challenges their claim can only answer that he
is wicked for asking questions.

He fully admits the beauty of some of the types of character fostered by
the Roman Catholic Church, although they imply a false view of certain
Cardinal points of morality, and argues that to some temperaments they
may have a legitimate charm. But that does not diminish the strength of
his conv