[c] Since writing the above, my attention has been called to Paley's censure of the "disingenuous _form_" under which Scepticism was placed before the public in his day. He says (_Moral Philosophy_, B. v. Sect. 9): "Infidelity is served up in every shape that is likely to allure, surprise, or beguile the imagination; in a fable, a tale, a novel, a poem; in interspersed and broken hints, remote and oblique surmises; in books of travels, of philosophy, of natural history; in a word, in any form rather than the right one,--that of a professed and regular disquisition. And because the coarse buffoonery and broad laugh of the old and rude adversaries of the Christian faith would offend the taste, perhaps, rather than the virtue of this cultivated age, a graver irony, a more skilful and delicate banter, is substituted in their place." [d] "Atheists," says the _Pall Mall Gazette_ of January 18, 1873, "write Atheism because they are Atheists, but Alexandre Dumas writes Atheism, though a good Catholic, who goes to church every Sunday." [e] Pre-eminent amongst these remonstrants is Mr. Gladstone. In the speech before cited, he says, p. 25: "It is to be hoped that they will cause a shock and a reaction, and will compel many, who may have too lightly valued the inheritance so dearly bought for them, and may have entered upon dangerous paths, to consider, while there is yet time, whither those paths will lead them. In no part of his writings, perhaps, has Strauss been so effective, as where he assails the inconsistency of those who adopt his premises, but decline to follow him to their conclusions. Suffice it to say, these opinions are by no means a merely German brood; there are many writers of kindred sympathies in England, and some of as outspoken courage." (Compare the extracts from this class of writers given along with the Premier's remarks in Note A.) [f] Die Zustände eines Volkes hängen hauptsächlich von seiner Denkweise ab: diese ist der wichtigste und einflussreichste Zustand. Alle andern können nur nach und in ihr begriffen werden. Sie ist es, die den Menschen zu einem solchen macht; und in ihrer Ausbildung entwickelt sich erst die Menschlichkeit.--(Wilhelm H. J. Bleek, "Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache," p. 12).