A third hypothesis indeed remains for any who are content to believe that Nature's elementary forces having, without knowing what they were about, constructed the human body, the human mind, until then a houseless wanderer, lit upon it by chance, and, observing it to be a habitation suitably swept and garnished, entered in and dwelt there. Upon this supposition there must be, within the limits of our terrene sphere, two distinct species of intelligence, a greater and a lesser--the one competent to construct all sorts of marvellously complex and marvellously serviceable machines, yet incompetent to understand their utility, the other fully perceiving the utility of the machines, yet utterly incompetent to fabricate them. But there are probably few adventurers on the ocean of speculation who would not prefer total shipwreck to the shelter of such a harbour of refuge as this. Atheism must in fairness be acknowledged to have much mended its manners within the last two or three generations. Its tone and language are no longer of the rude, scoffing sort at which Voltaire may be readily pictured as breaking into voluble protest, or Hume as contemptuously opening his eyes and shrugging his shoulders. Though grown more civil, however, it cannot be complimented on having grown more rational. At most may it be credited with being more elaborately irrational than of old. It now no longer denies, it only ignores. It does not pronounce God non-existent. It only insists that there is not complete proof that God exists; thereupon, however, proceeding to argue as if He did not exist, and thereby, not simply confounding deficiency of proof on one side with sufficiency of proof on the other, but overlooking an amount of proof that on any other subject would, provisionally at least, be deemed conclusive, and perversely rejecting an hypothesis which, whether correct, or not, is at least a good working hypothesis, coinciding exactly with most of the facts, and inconsistent with none of them, in favour of an hypothesis which, even in the hands of a Huxley or a Darwin, cannot be made to work at all. II.