Note 51 — IV.

I would venture respectfully to suggest that the following argument by Mr. Babbage is vitiated throughout by a confounding of the phenomena observed with the conclusions inferred from them.

"What, then, have those accomplished, who have restricted the Mosaic account of the creation to that diminutive period, which is, as it were, but a span in the duration of the earth's existence, and who have imprudently rejected the testimony of the senses, when opposed to their philological criticisms? The very arguments which Protestants have opposed to the doctrine of transubstantiation, would, if their view of the case were correct, be equally irresistible against the Book of Genesis. But let us consider what would be the conclusion of any reasonable being in a parallel case. Let us imagine a manuscript written three thousand years ago, and professing to be a revelation from the Deity, in which it was stated that the colour of the paper of the very book now in the reader's hands is black, and that the colour of the ink in the characters which he is now reading is white. With that reasonable doubt of his own individual faculties which would become the inquirer into the truth of a statement said to be derived from so high an origin, he would ask all those around him, whether to their senses the paper appeared to be black, and the ink to be white. If he found the senses of other individuals agree with his own, then he would undoubtedly pronounce the alleged revelation a forgery, and those who propounded it to be either deceived or deceivers."—Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, p. 68.