Let it be observed in conclusion, that the mode in which common-sense people are accustomed to treat the primary tenets of most sciences, and the validity of their own ordinary beliefs, may be placed in curious contrast with their attitude towards the proofs of Natural Theology. In the former case, acceptance is easy and wholesale; in the latter, every mind seems to bristle with objections. Now there are evidently thousands who _must_ surrender their judgments to the demands of a present and pressing utility, and must take upon trust a multitude of maxims which they can never hope to investigate. The difficulties necessarily involved in each and all of these easy acceptations thus remain unsuspected, and cannot therefore be placed side by side with the difficulties of Theism. But, next arises a serious question. How far can a similar facility of wholesale acceptance and a similar absence of comparison with deeper truths, be considered a philosophic or even a fair procedure in the case of men and women who _think_ themselves into Atheism? [z] Neither can it be too often repeated that practical truth involves an enormous amount of speculative difficulty, and is received as the daily basis of human action in the face of doubts, which speculatively considered are absolutely insoluble. There is (as will appear in Chapter IV.) reason to extend this remark beyond what is commonly called practical truth far into the realm of speculative knowledge, or to speak more exactly, of all knowledge whatsoever. Suppose, for instance, the continuity of our inward power of receiving sense-impressions, of knowing, and reasoning; (our personal Identity) is a groundless belief;--Suppose too that our sense-impressions are reflections from self-created shadows and not from objective realities;--_where_ can any knowledge be truly subsistent save in that place of exile now generally termed "the Unknowable"? Compare Additional Notes A and B appended to this present Chapter. [107] La Philosophie en France. IX. p. 66. [108] First Principles, p. 108. [109] Lay Sermon delivered on Sunday, Jan. 7, 1866; in the collected vol. pp. 19, 20. [110] Essays I. p. 190. [111] Ibid. p. 211. [aa] Mr. Herbert Spencer has been freely criticized by Americans, in part as not being sufficiently thorough--in part as being untrue to his own position. A few quotations will be found in Additional Note F, on "The Unknowable."