undulatory theory might effectually twit the holder of it on his change of front. "This ether of yours," he might say, "alters its style with every change of service. Starting as a beggar, with scarcely a rag of 'property' to cover its bones, it turns up as a prince when large undertakings are wanted. You had some show of reason when, with the case of sound before. you, you assumed your ether to be a gas in the last extremity of attenuation. But, now that new service is rendered necessary by new facts, you drop the beggar's rags, and accomplish an undertaking, great and princely enough in all conscience; for it implies that not only planets of enormous weight, but comets with hardly any weight at all, fly through your hypothetical solid without perceptible loss of motion." This would sound very cogent, but it would be very vain. Equally vain, in my opinion, is Mr. Martineau's contention that we are not justified in modifying, in accordance with advancing knowledge, our notions of matter.
Before parting from Prof. Knight, let me commend his courage as well as his insight. We have heard much of late of the peril to morality involved in the decay of religious belief. What Mr, Knight says under this head is worthy of all respect and attention:
"I admit that, were it proved that the moral faculty was derived as well as developed, its present decisions would not be invalidated. The child of experience has a father whose teachings are grave, peremptory, and august; and an earthborn rule may be as stringent as any derived from a celestial source. It does not even follow that a belief in the material origin of spiritual existence, accompanied by a corresponding decay of belief in immortality, must necessarily lead to a relaxation of the moral fibre of the race. It is certain that it has often done so.[1] But it is equally certain that there have been individuals, and great historical communities, in which the absence of the latter belief has neither weakened moral earnestness nor prevented devotional fervor."
I have elsewhere stated that some of the best men of my acquaintance—men lofty in thought and beneficent in act—belong to a class who assiduously let the belief referred to alone. They derive from it neither stimulus nor inspiration, while—I say it with regret—were I in quest of persons who, in regard to the finer endowments of human character, are to be ranked among the unendowed, I should find some characteristic samples among the noisier defenders of the orthodox belief. These, however, are but "hand-specimens" on both sides; the wider data referred to by Prof. Knight constitute, therefore, a welcome corroboration of my experience. Again, my excellent critic, Prof. Blackie, describes Buddha as being "a great deal more than a prophet; a rare, exceptional, and altogether transcendental incarnation of moral perfection."[2] And yet, "what Buddha preached was a gospel of pure
