AN ESSAY, IN CONFUTATION OF THE SCEPTICISM OF THE PRESENT DAY, WHICH OBTAINED A PRIZE AT OXFORD, NOV. 26TH, 1872. BY THE REVEREND WILLIAM JACKSON, M.A., F.S.A., FORMERLY FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, AUTHOR OF "POSITIVISM," "RIGHT AND WRONG," "THE GOLDEN SPELL," ETC. NEW YORK: A. D. F. RANDOLPH & CO., BROADWAY . MDCCCLXXV . to the most noble THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY, chancellor of the university of oxford, &c., &c., &c., the following pages are, with his lordship's

The Essay now published is the expansion of a thin volume by the present writer, which was printed more than four years ago. [1] Natural Theology, considered as a science, had been at that time pronounced extinct and impossible by very eminent authorities. From this decision I felt myself constrained to differ; and thought it worth while to put on record a plea for what appeared to me an unduly neglected branch of Philosophy. Such contempt of a pursuit possessing so many claims on the favourable

BELIEFS OF REASON. "While we indulge to the Sensitive or Plantal Life, our delights are common to us with the creatures below us: and 'tis likely, they exceed us as much in them, as in the senses their subjects; and that's a poor happiness for Man to aim at, in which Beasts are his Superiours. But those Mercurial spirits which were only lent the Earth to shew Men their folly in admiring it; possess delights of a nobler make and nature, which as it were antedate Immortality ; and, at an humble di

The present Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford wrote, in 1867, as follows:— "The chances of any accidental variation in such an instrument being an improvement are small indeed. Suppose, for instance, one of the surfaces of the crystalline lens of the eye of a creature, possessing a crystalline and cornea, to be accidentally altered, then I say, that unless the form of the other surface is simultaneously altered, in one only way out of millions of possible ways, the eye would not be optic

CAUSATION. [1] Right and Wrong. A Sermon upon the Question Under what Conditions is a Science of Natural Theology possible? Preached before the University of Oxford, March 6, 1870. [2] All citations made in the original draft, or in the foot-notes belonging to it, have been revised and altered to suit later editions of the authorities cited. Thus there are several extracts from books which may appear to be recent publications, but are, in fact, authorized rifaccimenti . [a] The language of this