By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported--and that the more we know of the fixed laws of Nature the more incredible do miracles become--that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us, that the Gospels can not be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seems to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses: by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wildfire had some weight with me. But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress. Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by a man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. But I have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the Variation of Domesticated Animals and Plants, and the argument there given has never, as far as I can see, been answered. Without doubt, the influence of the conclusions deducible from the theory of Evolution are fatal to belief in the supernatural. When we say the supernatural, we mean that great body of assumptions out of which are constructed all theologies, the essential element in these being the intimate relation between spiritual beings, of whom certain qualities are predicated, and man. These beings have no longer any place in the effective belief of intelligent and unprejudiced men, because they are found to have no correspondence with the ascertained operations of Nature. [Illustration: Herbert Spencer] 2. _Herbert Spencer._