the right than a Blackfoot Indian. Not a single one of the many
sciences in which we surpass the Blackfoot Indians throws the
smallest light on the state of the soul after the animal life is
extinct. In truth all the philosophers, ancient and modern, who
have attempted, without the help of revelation to prove the
immortality of man, from Plato down to Franklin, appear to us to
have failed deplorably.

Then, again, all the great enigmas which perplex the natural
theologian are the same in all ages. The ingenuity of a people
just emerging from barbarism is quite sufficient to propound
those enigmas. The genius of Locke or Clarke is quite unable to
solve them. It is a mistake to imagine that subtle speculations
touching the Divine attributes, the origin of evil, the necessity
of human actions, the foundation of moral obligation, imply any
high degree of intellectual culture. Such speculations, on the
contrary, are in a peculiar manner the delight of intelligent
children and of half civilised men. The number of boys is not
small who, at fourteen, have thought enough on these questions to
be fully entitled to the praise which Voltaire gives to Zadig.
"Il en savait ce qu'on en a su dans tous les ages; c'est-a-dire,
fort peu de chose." The book of Job shows that, long before
letters and arts were known to Ionia, these vexing questions were
debated with no common skill and eloquence, under the tents of
the Idumean Emirs; nor has human reason, in the course of three
thousand years, discovered any satisfactory solution of the
riddles which perplexed Eliphaz and Zophar.

Natural theology, then, is not a progressive science. That
knowledge of our origin and of our destiny which we derive from