We can as easily understand that the universe ever did exist, as we now understand that it does exist—­but we cannot conceive its absence for the millionth part of an instant—­and really it puzzles one to conceive what those people can be dreaming of who talk as familiarly about the extinction of a universe as the chemist does of extinguishing the flame of his spirit-lamp.  The unsatisfactory character of all speculations having for their object ‘nonentities with formidable names,’ should long ere this have opened men’s eyes to the folly of multiplying causes without necessity—­another rule of philosophising, for which we are indebted to Newton, but to which no superstitious philosophiser pays due attention.  Newton himself in his theistical character, wrote and talked as though most blissfully ignorant of that rule.

The passages given above from his ‘Principia’ palpably violate it.  But Theists, however learned, pay little regard to any rules of philosophising, which put in peril their fundamental crotchet.

A distinguished modern Fabulist [38:1] has introduced to us a philosophical mouse who praised beneficent Deity because of his great regard for mice:  for one half of us, quoth he, received the gift of wings, so that if they who have none, should by cats happen to be exterminated, how easily could our ‘Heavenly Father,’ out of the bats re-establish our exterminated species.

Voltaire had no objection to fable if it were symbolic of truth; and here is fable, which, according to its author, is symbolic of the little regarded truth, that our pride rests mainly on our ignorance, for, as he sagely says, ‘the good mouse knew not that there are also winged cats.’  If she had her speculations concerning the beneficence of Deity would have been less orthodox, mayhap, but decidedly more rational.  The wisdom of this pious mouse is very similar to that of the Theologian who knew not how sufficiently to admire God’s goodness in causing large rivers almost always to flow in the neighbourhood of large towns.

To jump at conclusions on no other authority than their own ignorant assumption, and to Deify errors on no other authority than their own heated imagination, has in all ages been the practice of Theologians.  Of that practice they are proud, as was the mouse of our Fabulist.  Clothed in no other panoply than their own conceits they deem themselves invulnerable.  While uttering the wildest incoherencies their self-complacency remains undisturbed.  They remind one of that ambitious crow who, thinking more highly of himself than was quite proper, strutted so proudly about with the Peacock’s feathers in which he had bedecked himself.—­Like him, they plume themselves upon their own egregious folly, and like him should get well plucked for their pains.