I told him that, as he doubted whether man had any distinctly marked religious and spiritual faculties, while I affirmed that he had, —­although he was quite right in supposing that I did not believe that they acted except in close conjunction with the intellect,—­it made it difficult to hold any discourse with him.  Doubting the Bible, he had also learned to doubt that doctrine of human depravity, which he once thought harmonized—­and I still thought did alone harmonize—­the great facts of man’s essentially religious constitution and his eternally varied and most egregiously corrupt religious development.

However, I told him that, even in the concession of the probable as a sufficient rule of conduct in this life, he had granted enough to condemn utterly his sceptical position.

He now looked sincerely interested.  “Let me,” said I, “ask you a few questions.”  He glanced towards me an arch look.  “What!” he said, “you wish to get the Socratic weather-gage of me, do you?  You forget, my dear uncle, that you introduced me to the Platonic dialectics.”

“Heaven forgive you,” said I, “for the thought.  You know I make little pretension to your favorite erotetic method:  and if I did, oh! do you not know, Harrington, my son, that, if I could but convince you on this one subject, I would consent to be confuted by you on every other every day in the year?—­nay, to be trampled under your feet?” I added, with a faltering voice.  “And, besides that, do you not know that there can be no rivalry between father and son; that it is the only human affection which forbids it; that pride, and not envy, swells a father’s heart, when he finds himself outdone?”

He was not unmoved; told me he knew that I loved him well, and desired me to ask any questions I pleased.

He saw how gratified his affection made me feel.  I said, gayly, “Well, then, let me ask (as our old friend with the queer face might have said), Do you not grant there is such a thing as prudence?”

“I do,” he said.

“But to be prudent is, I think, to do that which is most likely to promote our happiness.”

“That which seems most likely, for I do not admit that we know what will.”

“That which seems, then, for it is of no consequence.”

“Of no consequence! surely there is a little difference between being and seeming to be.”

“All the difference in the world,” I replied, “but not in relation to our choice of conduct, We choose, if prudent, that conduct which, on the whole, deliberately seems most likely to promote our happiness, and, as far as that goes, what seems is.”

“I grant it; and that probabilities are the measure of it,” said Harrington.

“You are of Bayle’s opinion, that there is in relation to the present life a probable prudent, and that it would be gross folly to neglect it?”

“Certainly.”

“And in proportion as the interest was greater, and extended over a longer time, you would be content with less and less probabilities to justify action?”