Note 48 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT—(Continued)

Notably enough, he anticipates the critical position of Hume as to reason and experience: “That these and these be the causes of these and these effects, time hath taught us and not reason; and so hath experience without art.”48 Such utterance, if not connected with professions of piety, might in those days give rise to such charges of unbelief as were so freely cast at him. But the charges seem to have been in large part mere expressions of the malignity which religion so normally fosters, and which can seldom have been more bitter than then. Raleigh is no admirable type of rectitude; but he can hardly have been a worse man than his orthodox enemies. And we must estimate such men in full view of the low standards of their age.