'interrupted the pleasures of the world. On the contrary, thus 'much at least will be here found, not taken for granted, but 'proved, that any reasonable man who will thoroughly consider the matter, may be as much assured as he is of his own being, that it is not however so clear a case, that there is nothing in 'it. There is, I think, strong evidence of its truth; but it is ' certain no one can upon principles of reason be satisfied of the 'contrary.' He is arguing then with men who do not acknowledge the ordinary evidences for Christianity. And it is the same with respect to natural religion. He is arguing with men who do not admit the ordinary evidence for natural religion, and the Divine moral government. Having excluded themselves then from the strong ground of evidence, he offers, or rather fastens upon them, another much weaker, but still better than none at all. There is, I think, strong evidence of the truth' of religion; but that evidence he does not now bring forward, because it consists of an appeal to our moral nature, which can be strong evidence only to those who admit that moral nature. He is obliged to confine himself to a kind of evidence which leads to a much weaker result, and does not prove that religion is true, but only that it cannot be set down as false that they cannot be satisfied to the contrary.' But as that is the only kind of evidence they acknowledge, he uses it. It is evidently a gain if even such a result can be produced. Evidence which leads even to an inferior conclusion, is valuable if it is of a species which is admitted and recognised by the persons addressed, while to address evidence to them which led to the most positive conclusion, would be wholly useless, if the evidence itself was of a species which they did not recognise. The argument, then, on which Butler himself considered the truth of religion to rest, was a different one from the argument used in the Analogy. Does not Mr. Maurice himself admit this?

'He did, however, use words addressed to the loose thinkers of his day, the men of wit and fashion about town, which seem to confound "probabilities," with "chances;" to suggest the thought that we are to calculate the likelihood of religious principles being true, and that if there is even a slight balance in favour of them-nay, none at all—we are to throw in the danger of rejecting them as a make weight, and so to force ourselves into the adoption of them. I groan over these words as I read them, feeling how much a great and good man was sacrificing of what was dearest to his heart, for the sake of an argumentum ad hominem, which, after all, was not an argument that ever reached the conscience of any man, or that could do so, if the conscience is what Butler affirms it to be.'-Maurice's Theological Essays, p. 234.

Why does Mr. Maurice groan? even according to his own statement.

We see no reason for it,
He calls Butler's argument

an argumentum ad hominem. But is not an argumentum ad

hominem, by the very force of the expression, an argument which a man uses out of accommodation to another, and not the argument upon which he rests himself the truth of the conclusion in which he believes? Does a man give up his own stronger ground, because he uses another weaker one, out of accommodation to another man, who will not listen to the stronger? And if he does not, what is there to deplore? Truth is not injured, and a charity is done.

Not that the Analogy, though addressed primarily, is addressed solely to those who do not admit the stronger ground of evidence for religion. Undoubtedly, however we may admit that stronger ground, analogy is a confirmation of it; and that testimony of conscience to the moral and immoral character of actions, on which we substantially base our anticipation of a future judgment, is strengthened when we see that as a matter of fact these actions are, to a large extent, respectively rewarded and punished in this life. But this again does not make analogy the ground of our belief in religion. On the contrary, it makes it pre-suppose that ground. Nor can anything be more distinct and express than Butler's own statement on this subject. It is 'not the purpose,' he says, ' of this treatise properly to prove God's perfect moral government over the world; but to observe what there is in the constitution and course of nature to confirm the proper proof supposed to be known. Pleasure and pain are indeed, to a certain degree, say to a very high degree, distri'buted amongst us without any regard to the merit and demerit ' of characters. And were there nothing also concerning this matter discernible in the constitution and course of nature, 'there would be no ground from the constitution and course of 'nature to hope or to fear that men would be rewarded or punished hereafter according to their deserts. And thus the 'proof of a future state of retribution would rest upon the usual known arguments for it, which I think are plainly unanswerable, and would be so were there no additional confirmation of them 'from the things above insisted on." Again, That there is an intelligent Author of Nature, a natural governor of the world, is a principle gone upon in the foregoing treatise as proved, and generally known and confessed to be proved. And the very notion of an intelligent Author of Nature, proved by particular 'final causes, implies a will and a character. Now as our whole 'nature, the nature which He has given us, leads us to conclude his ' will and character to be moral, just, and good, so we can scarce in 'imagination conceive what it can be otherwise. This is the proof then, according to Butler, of the truth of religion and 1 Chapter on the Moral Government of God, (near the end.) 2 Conclusion of First Part of Analogy.

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the divine moral government, viz. not analogy, but something which analogy supposes, an argument which is plainly unanswerable, and would be so, were there no additional confir'mation of it from analogy,'-the argument that we have a moral nature, and that, therefore, the existence of a God, the maker of that nature, supposed, His nature and character must be moral too.

It would be a hard task to go into all the mistakes which Mr. Maurice makes, in consequence of supposing, against Butler's own distinct protest, that analogy is the original evidence of religion, in his scheme, and not a mere secondary and confirmatory one. But his comparison between Butler's moral system and Mr. Combe's physical one should not be passed over. Mr. Combe proves that the observance of certain physical laws is necessary for the welfare of man, and, there→ fore, that these laws have, according to the design of the Author of nature, a claim on our attention and obedience, as guides to life. Butler proves the same of moral laws. Mr. Maurice, on a comparison of the evidence brought forward by the two for their respective sets of laws, asserts Mr. Combe's to be based on sure scientific observation, and Butler's on mere guess and presumption; and remarks, Whenever guesses are balanced against laws, guesses must kick the beam; if divines and moralists ' have nothing but guesses to produce, and Mr. Combe has laws, it is not a matter of doubt, but of certainty, that he will be 'the teacher of the world, and that they must make their way ' out of it as fast as they can.'

This comparison is evidently founded on the mistake we have noticed, viz. on Mr. Maurice's idea that analogy is Butler's primary argument for the truth of religion. Analogy being supposed to be his argument, Butler's argument, and Mr. Combe's argument, are both arguments of the same kind; the proofs are the same in both cases: Mr. Combe observes as a fact that certain physical antecedents produce certain consequences painful or pleasant; Butler observes, that certain moral antecedents, or actions and ways of life, produce certain consequences painful or pleasant. The arguments of the two are therefore, on Mr. Maurice's supposition, arguments of the same kind; they are both of them inductions; and Mr. Combe's induction is a much more correct, accurate and certain one, than Butler's. But Butler's primary argument for the truth of religion is not analogy, and implies no induction at all; it is an appeal to our consciousness of a certain moral nature within us in the first place; it is an immediate inference from that moral nature in the next. His and Mr. Combe's, therefore, are different arguments, and cannot be compared.

Indeed, if Mr. Maurice will only reflect, he must see how perfectly inconsistent Butler's whole view of morals is with induction as its basis. Whatever uncertainty may attend Butler's view of morals, he is yet regarded by Mr. Maurice as maintaining morals, in the true sense of that word; i. e. as holding a fundamental distinction between good and evil, in actions. But he could not, by possibility, get at such a distinction by induction. In induction we observe facts, and put them together, but we cannot get beyond this colligation or summary of the facts themselves, or get at an internal quality or characteristic of them, such as the moral one. To observe that intemperance, veracity, pride, lying, temperance, honesty, fraud, and many other habits and lines of behaviour, in the department of human life, are connected as antecedents with certain consequences, such as intemperance with disease, lying with dishonour, veracity with credit, and so on,-is not to arrive at the quality of moral good or evil attaching to these respective ways of acting. That can only be discerned by an internal sense. The argument of the Analogy we mean the argument put out there, as distinct from any ground presupposed-is indeed one of this simply inductive sort. Nothing being taken for granted with respect to the intrinsic moral good and evil of actions, and without saying that temperance is at all better morally than drunkenness, or veracity than lying, all the actions that take place in human life are in that argument simply looked upon as facts; and Butler asserts the present experienced connexion of certain pleasures or pains with them, in the way of antecedent and consequent, exactly as a medical man would connect one physical state or habit with another, or as a chemist would observe that certain results were produced when certain materials were brought together. The argument of the Analogy' is thus a purely inductive one; and we will admit further, that as an inductive argument it is much weaker and much less conclusive than Mr. Combe's-simply for this reason, that the facts in Mr. Combe's department are so much more fixed and clear than in Butler's. That some things produce health, and other things produce disease, is a much more uniform connexion of antecedent and consequent than that virtues produce happiness, and vices misery, in this world. It is admitted that the facts in this latter department are not constant; that there is a large disturbance, that evil is often triumphant, and good depressed. And this causes the manifest weakness and poverty of the argumentative result of analogy pure. It cannot be helped. The result is, indeed, as far as it goes, decided. There is a clear balance on the whole in favour of virtue; and that being

the case, a man is as really bound by the result, as if it were a much larger one. Still the facts are inconstant, and the induction must represent the facts. Admitting, however, that the argument of the Analogy' is of itself an induction, and that a necessarily poor induction, we repeat that Butler did not rest the evidence of religion on the argument of analogy.

But now we must turn the tables upon Mr. Maurice, and having stood so long on the defensive, must become the accuser on this subject. We have explained what induction is, and its inherent weakness as an argument in morals. But, after charging Bishop Butler with resting morals on a weak and uncertain ground, what does Mr. Maurice do himself but rest the evidence of moral truth upon this very ground—that of induction? This is certainly implied in the following passage, which is given at large, marking what part we especially refer to:

"But though there may be this single point of agreement amongst Christian doctors on this subject, are there not the greatest disagreements among them; such disagreements as entirely bear out Mr. Combe's assertion that nothing is settled about the moral or spiritual constitution, while he is able to argue from the most certain data respecting the physical?" Before I answer this question, I wish to inquire what those data are, from which Mr. Combe argues, and what is his method of coming at conclusions from them. These data, I conceive, are certain facts respecting the condition of men in different circumstances; respecting their states of health and of disease; respecting the treatment, mischievous and beneficial, which has been applied to them. Such facts have not been merely observed, loosely and carelessly: they have been submitted to a series of searching experiments. There have been experiments on the bodily frame which illustrated those on the influences to which it is exposed; the anatomist, physiologist, chemist, geologist, each contributing his quota of observation and thought, to the confirmation or correction of the other. Thus, after many theories have been accepted, and thrown aside, some simple law has been brought to light, the great test of which has been, its power of explaining facts, new and old; so far as it can do that, it sustains its character; when it fails, it is not discarded, but it is supposed that some deeper, more comprehensive law is yet to reward the toil and humility of the inquirer. What can be better or truer than investigations of this kind? What duty can be greater, than to avail ourselves of the results to which they lead? But the more we study them and admire them, the less shall we adopt those loose expressions which represent this evidence as something altogether different in kind from that which is open to moralists and divines, if they like to make use of it. I do not believe that Butler intended to distinguish the probable evidence to which he appeals in his Analogy, from this kind of induction. On the contrary, he is applying the inductive method with the same hesitation and unwillingness to accept hasty generalizations, with the same readiness to look at facts and test them, which characterises the physical inquirer. And he wished his reader to feel how satisfactory that method was, what a guide it was to practical decisions, what a deliverance from mere vague hypotheses.'-Ibid. pp. 232–234.

To say that we understand this passage as a whole would, indeed, be boastful. The author thinks that Butler distinguished, though without intending it, probable evidence from