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Alfonso, who was a lover of truth, and whose intercession I trust I shall not lose, though, on the matter under consideration, I follow other guidance in preference to his. Now I make this remark first: great English authors, Jeremy Taylor, Milton, Paley, Johnson, men of very distinct schools of thought, distinctly say, that under certain special circumstances it is allowable to tell a lie.
The Natural Theology of Paley, and the Bridgewater Treatises, place the subject in so clear a light, that the general postulate may be taken for granted. The physical constitution of animals is, then, to be regarded as in the nicest congruity and adaptation to the external world. Less clear ideas have hitherto been entertained on the mental constitution of animals.
In such case, why should we regard Man as in any higher sense the object of Divine care than a pig? Still stronger does the case appear when we remember that those countless adaptations of means to ends in nature, which since the time of Voltaire and Paley we have been accustomed to cite as evidences of creative design, have received at the hands of Mr. Darwin a very different interpretation.
I remember that when they first found it I had thought of Paley, and how he tells us that a savage on seeing a watch would at once conclude that it was designed.
If Paley had simply said that the story of a miracle-worker, named the Anointed Saviour, who was born of a virgin, was crucified, rose and ascended into heaven, was told with many variations among the Christians. from about 100 years after his supposed birth, he would have spoken truly; and had he added to this, that the very same story was told among Egyptians and Hindoos, many hundreds of years earlier, he would have treated his readers honestly, although he might not thereby have increased their belief in the "divine origin of Christianity."
Darwin, all that Professor Huxley, has so learnedly and so acutely written on physical science, and yet preserve our natural theology on exactly the same basis as that on which Butler and Paley left it. That we should have to develop it, I do not deny. That we should have to relinquish it, I do. Let me press this thought earnestly on you.
Paley had still his disciples at Cambridge, or if not disciples, yet representatives of his masculine but not very profound and reverent way of thinking; and a critical school, represented by names afterwards famous, Connop Thirlwall and Julius Hare, strongly influenced by German speculation, both in theology and history, began to attract attention.
You speak eagerly enough in your leading articles when you espy a false argument in an opponent, or detect a quack in the House. Paley, who does not care for anything else in the world, will talk for an hour about a question of law. Give another the privilege which you take yourself, and the free use of his faculty, and let him be what nature has made him.
"I can prove beyond the power of refutation," the naturalist eagerly exclaimed, "by Paley, Berkeley, ay, even by the immortal Binkerschoek, that a compactum, concluded while one of the parties, be it a state or be it an individual, is in durance "
'And your acquaintance is he a reader of Paley too? 'I believe the chaplain set him on it. He is a clerk, like me, and not much older. He is a regular Londoner, and can hardly stand the work; but he won't give in if he can help it, or we might not be together.
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