“No doubt,” the Doctor replied, “all large views of mankind limit our estimate of the absolute freedom of the will.  But I don’t think it degrades or endangers us, for this reason, that, while it makes us charitable to the rest of mankind, our own sense of freedom, whatever it is, is never affected by argument. Conscience won’t be reasoned with.  We feel that we can practically do this or that, and if we choose the wrong, we know we are responsible; but observation teaches us that this or that other race or individual has not the same practical freedom of choice.  I don’t see how we can avoid this conclusion in the instance of the American Indians.  The science of Ethnology has upset a good many theoretical notions about human nature.”

“Science!” said the Reverend Doctor, “science! that was a word the Apostle Paul did not seem to think much of, if we may judge by the Epistle to Timothy:  ‘Oppositions of science falsely so called.’  I own that I am jealous of that word and the pretensions that go with it.  Science has seemed to me to be very often only the handmaid of skepticism.”

“Doctor!” the physician said, emphatically, “science is knowledge.  Nothing that is not known properly belongs to science.  Whenever knowledge obliges us to doubt, we are always safe in doubting.  Astronomers foretell eclipses, say how long comets are to stay with us, point out where a new planet is to be found.  We see they know what they assert, and the poor old Roman Catholic Church has at last to knock under.  So Geology proves a certain succession of events, and the best Christian in the world must make the earth’s history square with it.  Besides, I don’t think you remember what great revelations of himself the Creator has made in the minds of the men who have built up science.  You seem to me to hold his human masterpieces very cheap.  Don’t you think the ‘inspiration of the Almighty’ gave Newton and Cuvier ’understanding’?”

The Reverend Doctor was not arguing for victory.  In fact, what he wanted was to call out the opinions of the old physician by a show of opposition, being already predisposed to agree with many of them.  He was rather trying the common arguments, as one tries tricks of fence merely to learn the way of parrying.  But just here he saw a tempting opening, and could not resist giving a horne-thrust.

“Yes; but you surely would not consider it inspiration of the same kind as that of the writers of the Old Testament?”

That cornered the Doctor, and he paused a moment before he replied.  Then he raised his head, so as to command the Reverend Doctor’s face through his spectacles, and said,—­

“I did not say that.  You are clear, I suppose, that the Omniscient spoke through Solomon, but that Shakspeare wrote without his help?”

The Reverend Doctor looked very grave.  It was a bold, blunt way of putting the question.  He turned it aside with the remark, that Shakspeare seemed to him at times to come as near inspiration as any human being not included among the sacred writers.