It is often said that books are companions. They are so, dear, very dear companions! But I often, when I read a book that delights me on the whole, feel a pang that the author is not present, that I cannot _object_ to him this and that, express my sympathy and gratitude for this part and mention some facts that self-evidently overset a second, start a doubt about a third, or confirm and carry [on] a fourth thought. At times I become restless, for my nature is very social.
"Well" (says Lady Ball), "the Catholic religion is better than none." Why, to be sure, it is called a religion, but the question is, Is it a religion? Sugar of lead! better than no sugar! Put oil of vitriol into my salad--well, better than no oil at all! Or a fellow vends a poison under the name of James' powders--well, we must get the best we can--better that than none! So did not our noble ancestors reason or feel, or we should now be slaves and even as the Sicilians are at this day, or worse, for even they have been made less foolish, in spite of themselves, by others' wisdom.
[Sidenote: REIMARUS AND THE "INSTINCTS OF ANIMALS"]
I have read with wonder and delight that passage of Reimarus in which he speaks of the immense multitude of plants, and the curious, regular _choice_ of different herbivorous animals with respect to them, and the following pages in which he treats of the pairing of insects and the equally wonderful processes of egg-laying and so forth. All in motion! the sea-fish to the shores and rivers--the land crab to the sea-shore! I would fain describe all the creation thus agitated by the one or other of the three instincts--self-preservation, childing, and child-preservation. Set this by Darwin's theory of the maternal instinct--O mercy! the blindness of the man! and it is imagination, forsooth! that misled him--too much poetry in his philosophy! this abject deadness of all that sense of the obscure and indefinite, this superstitious fetish-worship of lazy or fascinated fancy! O this, indeed, deserves to be dwelt on.
Think of all this as an absolute revelation, a real presence of Deity, and compare it with historical traditionary religion. There are two revelations--the material and the moral--and the former is not to be seen but by the latter. As St. Paul has so well observed: "By worldly wisdom no man ever arrived at God;" but having seen Him by the moral sense, then we _understand_ the outward world. Even as with books, no book of itself teaches a language in the first instance; but having by sympathy of soul learnt it, we then understand the book--that is, the _Deus minor_ in His work.