Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/341

Rh may minister to needs and aspirations which science can not meet." And then, further on, respecting a certain "patchwork scheme of belief," he says—"If and in so far as it really meets their needs I have nothing to say against it, and can hold out small hope of bettering it. It is much more satisfactory as regards its content than Naturalism."

Is there not in these passages an indirect begging of the question? The title of Mr. Balfour's work is The Foundations of Belief. Belief in what? Not in any of those doctrines which he groups together under the name of Naturalism; but in the opposed doctrine, Supernaturalism—belief in a Ruling Power such as that which the current creed asserts. If the existence of such a Power is tacitly assumed by the arguments urged in proof of it, the reasoning is circular. But unless the existence of such a Power is assumed, how can it be assumed that the constitution of things is one which "ministers" to men's "needs and aspirations," or provides a theory which is "satisfactory"? In the absence of the assumption that things have been by some agency prearranged for men's benefit, there seems no reason to expect the order of the Universe to be one which provides for men's mental "needs and aspirations"; and that the truth of a theory may be judged by the degree in which it conforms to such expectation.

Tests furnished by other creeds clearly show this. If a North American Indian, confidently looking forward to a "happy hunting-ground" after death, is told that there is no such place, is the fact that the creed offered to him negatives his hopes a reason for rejecting it? When the baselessness of his belief in an unlimited supply of houris to be hereafter provided, is shown to a Mahommedan, may he urge that his "needs and aspirations" can not be otherwise satisfied, and that therefore his faith must be true? Or once more, if to the half-starved and over-worked Hindoo, to whom it is a consolatory thought that by placing himself under the wheel of Juggernaut's car he may forthwith ascend to heaven, there comes the demonstration that he can not thus gain happiness, is the fact that the alternative belief is not "satisfactory" a sufficient ground for adhering to his superstition? Doubtless the needs and satisfactions which Mr. Balfour has in view are of a higher order than those instanced, but that does not alter the issue. The question is whether the comforting character of a belief is an adequate reason for entertaining it; and the answer to this question is not to be determined by the quality of the comfort looked for, as high or low.

The truth is that Mr. Balfour's view, here tacitly implied, is a more refined form of that primitive view which regards things as