We have but to remember that a belief that was supposed to rest on an equally wide basis--the belief in God, and in a supernatural order--has in these days, not been questioned only, but has been to a great degree, successfully annihilated.

The only philosophy that belongs to the present age, the only philosophy that is a really new agent in progress, has declared this belief to be a dissolving dream of the past.

And this belief, as we shall see presently, is, amongst civilized men at least, far older than the belief in life; it has been far more widely spread, and experience has been held to confirm it with an equal certainty.

If this then is inevitably disintegrated by the action of a widening knowledge, it cannot be taken for granted that the belief in life will not fare likewise.

It may do so; but until we have examined it more closely we cannot be certain that it will.