"We believe," says Lewes, "that the sensation of violet is produced by the striking of the ethereal waves against the retina more than seven hundred billions of times in a second. * * * These statements are accepted _on trust_ by us who know that there are thinkers for whom they are irresistible conclusions." It is evident that it is to faith that science owes, to a very great extent, her progress and development; for it is impossible for man to prove by experimental demonstration all the facts of science, and since a certain number of facts have got to be accepted before a new experiment can be attempted, he has to accept on faith that such and such a statement is a fact, because such and such a scientist has claimed to have demonstrated it. "We are not _responsible_ for the fact," says Krauth, "that under the conditions of knowledge we _know_, or in defect of them do not know; we are responsible if, under the conditions of a well-grounded faith, we disbelieve."[63] Let us look, then, at the belief in God. The question under consideration at first will not be whether there exists a God, the creator and ruler of the universe--for this will be afterward considered--but is there any evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent God. Schweinfurth relates that the Niam-niam, that highly interesting dwarf people of Central Africa, have no word for God, and therefore, it must be supposed, no idea; and Moritz Wagner has given a whole selection of reports on the absence of religious consciousness in inferior nations. The idea that conscience is a sort of permanent inspiration or dwelling of God in the soul, I think, on consideration, any reasonable man will not assume. "It is a purely human faculty," says Savage, "like the faculty for art or music; and it gets its authority, as they do by being true, and just in so far as it is true. Consciousness is our own knowledge of ourselves and of the relation between our own faculties and powers. Conscience is our recognition of the relations, as right or wrong, in which we stand to those about us, God and our fellows. _Con-scio_ is to know with, in relation.