(TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPEOTATOR.1
feel very much obliged to Mr. Spalding for stating so clearly the results of modern science on the illusions of volition and consciousness, for I am no longer young, and though I readily admit that science will overcome prejudice, and that the truth, however unpleasant, will prevail, my ideas are getting ossified, and I find it sometimes very difficult to shake off the old notions in which I have been educated. I part with regret for ever with the heroic old story of Henri IV. of France threatening his body before going into battle :—" Ah ! tu trembles, guenille ;" said the King, "how much more thou wouldst tremble if thou knewest where I am going to take thee very shortly !" I grieve to learn that this energetic speech was based on ignorance of physical laws, and on illusions now no longer tenable.
It is now well known, says M. Taine, that vice and virtue are products exactly like sugar and vitriol, and we may hope to know in time the laws by which they are produced. When science has clearly established those laws, it will be as irrational to feel in- dignation at base and cowardly actions as it would be to feel angry about the chemical affinities. A clearer insight into the laws of Nature will rid us, I am assured, of the very disagreeable feelings of regret and remorse. But I find it very difficult to conceive a society from which science has eliminated all idea of responsibility, and still more difficult to understand how the modern ideas can be taught to the young in our schools without fatally weakening every youthful effort.
, I remember, Sir, reading in the Spectator the letter of a corre- spondent who, writing against the Twenty-fifth Clause, com- plained that the clergy prevented the results of science being taught in our schools, and it appears to me now that the clergy are perhaps not so wrong, after all. I should feel exceedingly grateful if that distinguished automaton Mr. Spalding, or any competent representative of modern science, would explain to us how, in a state of society in which science has removed theology, they propose to deal with the education of the undeveloped automata, for I own I feel perplexed.—I am, Sir, &c.,
PATERFAMILIAS.
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