ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author talks about the religious implications of literary and philosophical texts of William Kingdon Clifford. He was born at Exeter, England, in 1845. He was elected as a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1868, and appointed professor of mathematics at University College, London, in 1871. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1874. Only thirty-three years old, he died of consumption in 1879, at Madeira. His works include Seeing and Thinking, Elements of Dynamic, Mathematical Papers, and The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences. "The Ethics of Belief", reprinted here, comes from the second volume of Lectures and Essays, and was originally published in Contemporary Review, January, 1877. In his works, "The Ethics of Belief" is presented as the duty of inquiry, the weight of authority and the limits of inference.
