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 religious 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.  If they did, Atheism would need no apologist, and Theism have no defenders; for Theism, in all its varieties, presupposes a supernatural Causer of what experience pronounces natural effects.

The Author is aware that ‘Natural Theologians’ seek to justify their rebellion against the rules of philosophising, to which the reader’s attention has been specially directed, by appealing to (what they call) evidences of design in the universal fabric.  But though they think so highly of the design argument, it is not the less true that that argument rests on mere assumption of a disputed fact; that even though it were proved the universe was designed, still whether designed by one God, two Gods, or two million of Gods, would be unshown; and that Paley, ’the most famous of natural Theologians’—­Paley, who wrote as never man wrote before on the design question, has been satisfactorily refuted in his own words. [63:1]

A distinguished modern Fabulist [63:2] 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 we 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 assumptions, and to Deify errors on no other authority than their own heated imaginations, 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.