Part 7 (1/2)

Cx.x.xV

Whatever happens, science may bide her time in patience and in confidence.

Cx.x.xVI

The only people, scientific or other, who never make mistakes are those who do nothing.

Cx.x.xVII

The most considerable difference I note among men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses.

Cx.x.xVIII

Quite apart from deliberate and conscious fraud (which is a rarer thing than is often supposed), people whose mythopaeic faculty is once stirred are capable of saving the thing that is not, and of acting as they should not, to an extent which is hardly imaginable by persons who are not so easily affected by the contagion of blind faith. There is no falsify so gross that honest men and, still more, virtuous women, anxious to promote a good cause, will not lend themselves to it without any clear consciousness of the moral bearings of what they are doing.

Cx.x.xIX

This modern reproduction of the ancient prophet, with his ”Thus saith the Lord,” ”This is the work of the Lord,” steeped in supernaturalism and glorying in blind faith, is the mental antipodes of the philosopher, founded in naturalism and a fanatic for evidence, to whom these affirmations inevitably suggest the previous question: ”How do you know that the Lord saith it?” ”How do you know that the Lord doeth it?” and who is compelled to demand that rational ground for belief, without which, to the man of science, a.s.sent is merely an immoral pretence.

And it is this rational ground of belief which the writers of the Gospels, no less than Paul, and Eginhard, and Fox, so little dream of offering that they would regard the demand for it as a kind of blasphemy.

CXL

To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us in intellectual affairs would be about as reasonable as to object to live one's life, with due thought for the morrow, because no man can be sure he will be alive an hour hence.

CXLI

I verily believe that the great good which has been effected in the world by Christianity has been largely counteracted by the pestilent doctrine on which all the Churches have insisted, that honest disbelief in their more or less astonis.h.i.+ng creeds is a moral offence, indeed a sin of the deepest dye, deserving and involving the same future retribution as murder and robbery. If we could only see in one view, the torrents of hypocrisy and cruelty, the lies, the slaughter, the violations of every obligation of humanity, which have flowed from this source along the course of the history of Christian nations, our worst imaginations of h.e.l.l would pale beside the vision.

CXLII

Agnostioism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, ”Try all things, hold fast by that which is good”; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply ill.u.s.trated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him; it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.

CXLIII

The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.

CXLIV

That one should rejoice in the good man, forgive the bad man, and pity and help all men to the best of one's ability, is surely indisputable.