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"Yes, I find in your reasoning very remarkable contradictions. You acknowledge for instance the infinity of space and time, and in spite of this you say that there was a time before the world was a year old. I do not understand that. We must assume for matter, for that is no doubt what you mean by the term 'world,' the same eternity as for space and time, whose infinity can be proved but not comprehended.

"A 'creation' in the sense of the various religions is equally incomprehensible to us.

"But I do not wish to enlarge on this point any farther. Here begins the limit of our thinking faculties, and it is the defect of all religions that they require us to occupy ourselves with matters that lie beyond this limit, that never can be revealed to us, since we are denied the understanding of them; a revelation is at all events a chimera. For either that which is to be revealed lies beyond our senses and ideas,--and then it cannot be revealed to us,--or it lies on this side, and then it need not be revealed to us.

"I believe, moreover, dear sir, that through your comparative studies of religion you must reach the same conclusion as myself, that all religious ideas have arisen solely in the brain of man himself, as efforts at explanation in the broadest sense; that dogmas were made out of hypotheses, and that no religion as a matter of fact reveals anything to us.

"Good and evil are purely human notions; an almighty God stands beyond good and evil. He is as incomprehensible to us in moral relations as in every other.

"Now I, who am but a poor child of man, full of evil inclinations according to Biblical lore, liberated the poor frog on my ground. But 'merciful nature' daily brings millions and millions of innocent creatures to a like cruel and miserable end.

"I intentionally leave out of consideration here the unspeakable sufferings of mankind. Believers in the Bible find it so convenient to argue about original sin. Where is the original sin of the tormented animal kingdom?

"Of course man in his unutterable pride looks with deep disdain on all living creatures that are not human. As if he were not bone of their bone, as if suffering did not form a common bond with all living creatures!

"Do you not bethink you, honoured student of Sanskrit, of the religion of the Brahmins? In sparing all animals, the Hindus have shown only the broadest consistency.

"There will come a time when there will be only one religion, without dogma: the religion of compassion. Christianity, lofty as is its ethical content, is not the goal, but only a stage in our religious development.

"It is a misfortune that Nietzsche, the great keen thinker, should have been misled into an opposite conclusion by the mental weakness, the paralytic imbecility, which gradually enveloped his brain like a growth of mould. And the foolish youths, who esteem the expressions of this incipient insanity as the revelations of a vigorous genius, swear by his later hallucinations about the Over-man and the blond beast.

"A specialist in mental disease can point out the traces of his malady years before it openly broke out. And as if he had not written enough when the world still considered him of sound mind, must men still try to glean from the time when his brain was already visibly clouded?

"How few there are who can pick out of the desolate morass of growing imbecility the scanty grains of higher intelligence! There will always be people who will be impressed, not by the sound part of his thought, but by his paradoxical nonsense.

"But--I am straying from the path. Now to the subject. I perfectly understand that the majority of religions had to assume a good and evil principle to guard themselves against the blasphemy of attributing all the suffering of the world to an all-merciful Creator. The devil is a necessary antithesis to God; to deny him is the first step made by the consistent man of science toward that atheism which originates really from the search for a better God. The Horseherd is wrong when he denies the existence of things beyond our power of conception. There are, as can be proved, tones that we do not hear, and rays that we cannot see. There are many things that we shall learn to comprehend in the hundreds of thousands of years that are in store for mankind. We are merely in the beginning of our development. Something, however, will always remain over. The 'Ignorabimus' of one of our foremost thinkers and investigators will always retain its value for us.

"The raindrop, because it is a drop, may fear for its individuality when it falls back into the sea whence it came. We men are perhaps only passing drops formed out of the everlasting changes of the world-sea.

"Those who think as I do constitute a silent but large congregation: silent, because the time is not yet ripe for a view that will rob thousands of their illusions. We do not preach a new salvation, but a silent, for many, a painful, renunciation. But the profound peace that lies in this view is as precious to those who have acquired it as is the hope of heaven to the believer. In honest doubt, too, lies a saving power as well as in faith; and your Horseherd is on the path of this salvation. "

With great respect, Yours very faithfully, Ignotus Agnosticus.

Whilst I received this and many other letters from many lands, no sign of life reached me from my Horseherd. He must have received my letter, or it would have been returned to me through the post. I regretted this, for I had formed a liking for the man as he appeared in his letter, and he no doubt would have had much to say in reply to my letter, which would have placed his views in a clearer light. He was an honest fellow, and I respect every conviction that is honest and sincere, even if it is diametrically opposite to my own. Now, my unknown friend could have had no thought of self in the matter. He knew that his name would not be mentioned by me, and it would probably have been of little concern to him if his name had become known. The worst feature of all discussions is the intrusion of the personal element. If for instance in a criticism of a new book we emphasise that which we think erroneous, for which every author should be grateful, we feel at the same time, that while desiring to render a service to the cause of truth, we may not only have hurt the book or the writer, but may have done a positive injury. The writer then feels himself impelled to defend his view not only with all the legitimate arts of advocacy, but also with the illegitimate. This poor truth is the greatest sufferer. As long as two paths are open, there is room for quiet discussion with one's travelling companion as to which may be the right and best path by which to reach the desired point. Both parties have the same object in view, the truth. As soon however as one goes, or has gone his own way, the controversy becomes personal and violent. There is no thought of turning back. It is no longer said: "This is the wrong path," but "You are on the wrong path," and even if it were possible to turn back, the controversy generally ends with, "I told you so." Poor Truth stands by sorrowfully and rubs its eyes.

For this reason the Horseherd was to me what all men have always been to me--an appearance of the Self, the same as I myself, not only a fellow-creature, but a fellow-man, a fellow-self. Had I met him in life, who knows whether his ego or his appearance would have attracted me as much as his letter. We all have our prejudices, and much as I honour a Silesian peasant who has spent his life faithfully and honestly in a strange land, I do not know whether I should have sat down by his iron stove and chatted with him about ?? ???????.

I also felt as I read his letter, that it was not a solitary voice in the desert, but that he spoke in the name of many who felt as he felt, without being willing or able to express it. This also has proved to be entirely true.

I am of opinion, therefore, that those who wished to espouse the cause of my Horseherd should have done so publicly and with open visor. As soon as any one feels that he has found the truth, he knows also that what is real and true can never be killed or silenced; and secondly, that truth in the world has its purpose, and this purpose must in the end be a good one. We do not complain about thunder and lightning, but accustom ourselves to them, and seek to understand them, so as to live on good terms with them; and we finally invent lightning conductors, to protect ourselves, as far as we can, against the inevitable. So it is with every new truth, if it is only maintained with courage. At first we cry and clamour that it is false, that it is dangerous. In the end we shake our wise heads and say these are old matters known long since, of which only old women were afraid. In the end, after the thunder and lightning, the air is made clearer, fresher, and more wholesome. When I first read the long letter of my Horseherd, I said to myself, "He is a man who has done the best he could in his position." He has let himself be taught, but also irresistibly influenced, by certain popular books, and has come to think that the abandonment of views that have been instilled into him from his youth is so brave and meritorious, that all who disagree with him must be cowards. This inculcation of truth into childish minds is always a dangerous matter, and even if I do not use the strong expressions that are used by my friend,--for I always think, the stronger the expression the weaker the argument,--I must admit that he is right up to a certain point. It does not seem fair that in the decision of the most important questions of life the young mind should have no voice. A Jewish child becomes a Jew, a Christian child a Christian, and a Buddhist child a Buddhist. What does this prove? Unquestionably, that in the highest concern in life the child is not allowed a voice. My friend asks indignantly: "Is there anything in face of our knowledge, and of the realm of nature and of man's position in it, so unbearable, yes so odious, as the inoculation of such error in the tender consciousness of our school children? I shudder when I think that in thousands of our churches and schools this systematic ruin of the greatest of all gifts, the consciousness, the human brain, is daily, even hourly, going on. Max, can you, too, still cling to the God-fable?" etc.

Now I have explained clearly and concisely in what sense I cling to the God-fable, and I should like to know if I have convinced my Horseherd. I belong, above all, to those who do not consider the world an irrational chaos, and also to those who cannot concede that there can be reason without a reasoner. Reason is an activity, or, as others have it, an attribute, and there can neither be an activity without an agent, nor an attribute without a subject; at least, not in the world in which we live. When ordinary persons and even professional philosophers speak of reason as if it were a jewel that can be placed in a drawer or in a human skull, they are simply myth-makers. It is precisely in this ever recurring elevation of an adjective or a verb to a noun, of a predicate to a subject, that this disease of language, as I have called mythology, has its deepest roots. Here lies the genesis of the majority of gods, not by any means, as it is generally believed I have taught, merely in later quibbles and misunderstandings, which are interesting and popular, but have little reference to the deepest nature of the myth. We must not take these matters too lightly.

I recognise therefore a reasoner, and consequent reason in the world, or in other words, I believe in a thinker and ruler of the world, but gladly concede that this Being so infinitely transcends our faculties of comprehension, that even to wish only to give him a name borders on madness. If, in spite of all of this, we use such names as Jehovah, Allah, Deva, God, Father, Creator, this is only a result of human weakness. I cling therefore to the God-fable in the sense which is more fully set forth in my letter, and it pleased me very much to see that at least a few of those, who as they said were formerly on the side of the Horseherd, now fully agree with me, that the world is not irrational. Here is the dividing line between two systems of philosophy. Whoever thinks that an irrational world becomes rational by the survival of the fittest, etc., stands on one side; I stand on the other, and hold with the Greek thinkers, who accept the world as the expression of the Logos, or of a reasonable thought or thinker.

But here the matter became serious. To my Horseherd I thought that I could make myself intelligible in a humorous strain, for his letter was permeated with a quiet humour. But my known and unknown opponents take the matter much more seriously and thoroughly, and I am consequently obliged at least to try to answer them seriously and thoroughly. What my readers will say to this I do not know. I believe that even in short words we can be serious and profound. When Schiller says that he belongs to no religion, and why? because of religion, the statement is short and concise, and yet easily understood. I shall, however, at least attempt to follow my opponents step by step, even at the risk of becoming tedious.

And first of all a confession. It has been pointed out to me that in one place I did my Horseherd an injustice. I wrote: "You are of opinion that to love God and your neighbour is equivalent to being good, and are evidently very proud of your discovery that there is no distinction between good and evil. Well," I then continue, "if loving God and your neighbour is equivalent to being good, then it follows that not loving God and not loving your neighbour is equivalent to not being good, or to being evil. There is, then, a very plain distinction between good and evil. And yet you say that you turned a somersault when you discovered that there was no such distinction."

But let us turn back to more important things. My opponents further call me sharply to account, and ask how I can imagine that the material world can be rational, or permeated with reason. I believed that it must be clear to every person with a philosophical training, that there are things that are beyond our understanding, that man can neither sensibly apprehend nor logically conceive an actual beginning, and that to inquire for the beginning of the subjective self, or of the objective world, is like inquiring for the beginning of the beginning. All that we can do is to investigate our perceptions, to see what they presuppose. A perception plainly presupposes a self that perceives, or that resists, and on the other side, something that forces itself upon us, or, as Kant says, something that is given. This "given" element might be mere confusion, but it is not; it displays order, cause and effect, and reveals itself as rational. This revelation of a rational world may, however, be explained in two ways. That there is reason in nature, even the majority of Darwinians admit, but they think that it arises of itself, since in the struggle for life that which is most adapted to its conditions, fittest, best, necessarily survives. In this view of the world, however, if I see it aright, much is admitted surreptitiously. Whence comes all at once this idea of the best, of the good, the fit, the adapted, in the world? Do roasted pigeons fall from the sky? Is the pigeon itself an accidental combination, an evolution, that might as well have been as it is, or otherwise? It is all very fine to recognise in the ascending series of protozoa, coelenterata, echinoderms, worms, mollusks, fishes, amphibia, reptiles, the stages of progress toward birds and finally to mammals and man. But whence comes the idea of bird or pigeon? Is it no more than an abstraction from our perceptions of thousands of birds or pigeons, or must the idea of bird, of pigeon, even of the wood pigeon, be there already, that we may detect it behind the multiplicity of our perceptions?

As many streams may flow alongside of each other and through the same strata, and one ends in a lake while the others flow on and grow larger and larger, till finally one river attains its highest goal, the sea, so the cells develop for a time alongside of each other, then some remain stationary at their points of destination, while others move on farther; but the cell that has moved forward is as little derived from the stationary cell as the Indus from the Sarasvati. It is at the points of destination that the true species digress, and when these points are reached, the specific development ceases, and there remains only the possibility of the variety, the origin of which is conditioned by the multiplicity of individuals; but which must never be confounded with a true species. Every species represents an act of the will, a thought, and this thought cannot be shaken from its course, however close temptation may often come.

F. MAX M?LLER. FRASCATI, April, 1897.

Language And Mind

Well, I shall endeavour to be as fair as I can to my unknown opponents and friends, the coarse as well as the courteous. I cannot be coarse myself, much as it seems to be desired in some quarters that I should. Each one must determine for himself what is specially meant for him.

If we take a firm stand on this living and perceiving Self , there can then be no question that it is present not only in men, but in animals as well; only let us beware of the inference that what we mean by human mind, that is, understanding and reasoning thought, is a necessary function of all living organisms, and is possessed also by a goose or a chicken. It is just the same with the perceiving Self as it is with the cell. To the eye they are all alike. To express it figuratively, one cell has a ticket to Cologne, another to Paris, a third to London. Each reaches its destination, and then remains stationary, and no power on earth can make it advance beyond the place to which it is ticketed, that is, its original destination, its fundamental eternal idea. It is just the same with the perceiving Self. It is true that the Self sees, hears, and thinks. As there are animals that cannot see, that cannot hear, so there are animals--and this class includes the whole of them--that cannot speak. It is true that the speaking animals, that is men, have passed the former stations on a fast train; but they did not leave the train, nor have they anything in common with those who remained behind at previous stations, least of all can we consider them as the offspring of those that remained behind. This is only a simile, and should not provoke ridicule. Of course it will be said that those who can journey to Cologne may go on to Paris, and once in Paris may easily cross the Channel. We must not ride a comparison to death, but always adhere to the facts. Why does not grass grow as high as a poplar, why is care taken, as Goethe says, that no tree grows up to the sky? A strawberry might grow as large as a cucumber or a pumpkin, but it does not. Who draws the line? It is true, too, that along every line slight deviations take place right and left. Nearly each year we hear of an abnormally large strawberry, and no doubt abnormally small ones could be found as well. But in spite of all, the normal remains. And whence comes it, if not from the same hand or the same source which we compared with the ticket agent at the railway station, in whom all who are familiar with the history of philosophy will again readily recognise the Greek Logos?

These comparisons should at least be so far useful as to disclose the confusion of thought, when, for instance, Mr. Romanes holds that it is not only comprehensible, but the conclusion is unavoidable, that the human mind has sprung from the minds of the higher quadrumana on the line of natural genesis. The human mind may mean every possible thing; the question therefore arises if he refers only to consciousness, or to understanding and reason. In the second place the human mind is not something subsisting by itself, but can only be the mind of an individual man. We cannot be too careful in these discussions--otherwise we only end by substituting bare abstractions for concrete things. We do not know the human mind as anything concrete at all, only as an abstraction, and in that case only as the mind of one man, or of many men. How can it then be thought that my mind or the mind of Darwin sprang from the minds of the higher quadrumana. We may say such things, but what meaning can we attach to them? The same misconception exists here, if I am not mistaken, as in the statement, that the human body springs from the bodies of the higher quadrupeds--a misconception to which we have already referred. That has absolutely no sense if we only hold firmly, that every organised body was originally a cell, or originates in a cell, and that each cell, even in its most complicated, manifold, and perfect form, always is, and remains, an individual. It is useless therefore to talk of a descent of the human mind from the minds of the higher quadrupeds, for no intelligible meaning can be discovered in it; we should have to fall back on a miscarriage, and to set up this miscarriage as the mother of all men, and without a legitimate father. Such are the wanderings of a wrong method of thought, even if it struts about in kingly robes.

Four sources have been propounded for the study of psychogenesis. It has been said that to investigate the development of the human mind, the following objects must be scientifically observed: The mind of a child; the mind of the lower animals; the survivals of the oldest culture, as we find it in ethnological collections; the mind of still living savages. I formerly entertained similar hopes, but in my own melancholy experience all these studies end in delusion, in so far as they are applied to explain the genesis of the human mind. They do not reach far enough, they give us everywhere only the products of growth, the result of art, not the natural growth, or the real evolution. The observations on the development of a child's mind are very attractive, especially when they are made by thoughtful mothers. But this nursery psychology is wanting in all scientific exactness. The object of observation, the child that cannot yet speak, can never be entirely isolated. Its environment is of incalculable influence, and the petted child develops very differently from the neglected foundling. The early smile of the one is often as much a reflex action as the crying and blustering of the other, from hunger or inherited disease. Much as I admire the painstaking effort with which the first evidences of perception or of mental activity in a child have been recorded from day to day, from week to week, these observations prove untrustworthy when we endeavour to control them independently. It has been said that the mental activities of a child develop in the following order:--

After three weeks fear is manifested;

After seven weeks social affections;

After twelve weeks jealousy and anger;

After five months sympathy;

After eight months, pride, sentiment, love of ornament;

After fifteen months, shame, remorse, a sense of the ludicrous.

We may generalise this scale as much as we please, and gradually permit the gradations to vanish, but I doubt if even two mothers could be found who would agree in such an interpretation of their children's looks. Add to this that this whole scale has very little to do with what, in the strict sense of the word, we call mind. From fear up to shame and penitence are all manifestations simply of the feelings, and not of the mind. We know that what we call fear is often a reflex action, as when a child closes its eyelids before a blow. What has been named jealousy in a child, is often nothing but hunger, while shame is instilled into one child, and in others is by no means of spontaneous growth.

The worst feature of such observations is that they are very quickly regarded as safe ground, and are reared higher and higher until in the end the entire scaffold collapses. In order to establish the truth of this psychologic scale in children still more firmly, and at the same time to make good its universal necessity, an effort has been made to prove that a similar scale is to be found in the animal kingdom, and of course what was sought has been found. Romanes asserts that the lowest order of animals, the annelids, only show traces of fear; a little higher in the scale, in insects, are found social instincts such as industry, combativeness, and curiosity; another step higher, fishes exhibit jealousy, and birds, sympathy; then in carnivorous animals follow cruelty, hate, and grief; and lastly, in the anthropoid apes, remorse, shame, and a sense of the ridiculous, as well as deceit. It needs but one step more to make this scale, which belongs much more to the sphere of feeling than the realm of thought, universally applicable to all psychology. How should we otherwise explain the parallelism between the mental development of infants and that of undeveloped animals? One need but take a firm hold of such observations, and they are transformed into airy visions. Who, for instance, would dare to distinguish the traces of fear in annelids from those of surprise in higher animals? Nevertheless fear occupies the first place, surprise the third. And what mark distinguished combativeness in insects from jealousy in fishes? In the same way I doubt if any two nurses would agree in the chronology of the phenomena of the infant disposition, and have therefore long since given up all hope of obtaining any hints either in embryological or physiological development, about the real historical unfolding of the human consciousness, either out of a nursery or out of a zo?logical garden.

What then remains to enable us to study the earliest phase of development of the human mind accessible to us? If we go to savages, whose language we only understand imperfectly, these observations are of course still more untrustworthy than in the case of our own children; at all events we must wait before we receive any really valuable evidence of the development of the human mind from that source. I repeat that the human mind itself, as far as it perceives, must simply be accepted as a fact, given to us and inexplicable, whether in civilised or uncivilised races; but only in its greatest simplicity, as mere self-conscious perception--a perception which in this simplicity can in no wise be denied to animals, although we can only with difficulty form a clear idea of the peculiarity of their sentient perceptions.

Of course it will be said that all this only applies to the Aryan race, and that they constitute only a small and perhaps the youngest portion of the human race. Well, it is difficult to prove that the Aryans constitute the least numerous subdivision. We know too little of their great masses to attempt a census. That they are the youngest branch of the human race is really of no consequence; we should then have to assume against all Darwinian principles, various, not contemporaneous, but successive monstrosities, slowly ascending to humanity, and this would only be pure invention. Nothing absolutely compels us to ascribe a shorter earthly life to those races which speak Chinese, Semitic, Bantu, American, Australian, or other languages, than to the Aryans. That all races have begun on a lower plane of culture, and especially of the knowledge of language, will no doubt be universally acknowledged. But even if we only place the first beginnings of the Aryan race at 10,000 B.C., there is time enough for it and other races to have risen, and also to have again declined. The difference would merely be that the Aryans, in spite of many drawbacks, on the whole constantly progressed, while the Australians, Negroes, and Patagonians, forced into unfavourable positions, remained stationary on a very low level. That their present plane can in any respect, and especially in regard to their language, supply a picture of the earliest condition of the human race, or even of certain branches of it, is again mere assumption, and as bare of all analogy as the attempt to see in the salons of London a picture of Aryan family life before the first separation. There are savages who are cannibals. Shall we conclude from this that the first men all devoured each other, or that only those who were least appetising remained over as survivals of the fittest? It is remarkable how many ideas are current in science which the healthy human mind, after short reflection, silently lays aside. Any one who has occupied himself with the polysynthetic tongues of the Redskins, or with the prefixes in the languages of the Bantus, knows how much time must have been needed to develop their grammar, and how much higher the makers of these languages must have stood than those who speak them now.

These ethnologists, too, always make the old mistake of confounding the learning of a language, as is done by every child, with the first invention or formation of a language. The two things are as radically different as the labour of miners who bring forth to the light of day gold ore out of the depths of the earth, and the enjoyment which the heirs of a rich man have in squandering his cash. The two things are quite different, and yet there are books upon books which attempt to draw conclusions as to the creation of language from children learning to talk. We have at least now got so far as to admit that language facilitates thinking; but that language first made thought possible, that it was the first step in the development of the human mind, but few anthropologists have seen. They do not know what language in the true sense of the word means, and still think that it is only communication, and that it does not differ from the signals made by chamois, or the information imparted by the antennae of ants. Henry Drummond goes so far as to say that "Any means by which information is conveyed from one mind to another, is language." That is entirely erroneous. The entire chapter on sign language, interesting as it is, must be treated quite differently by the philologist, compared with the ethnologist. When the sign is such as was used in the old method of telegraphing, and meant a real word, or, as in modern electric telegraphy, even a letter, this is really speaking by signs; and so is the finger language of the deaf and dumb. But when I threaten my opponent with my fist, or strike him in the face, when I laugh, cry, sob, sigh, I certainly do not speak, although I do make a communication, the meaning of which cannot be doubted. Not every communication, therefore, is language, nor does every act of speaking aim at a communication. There are philologists who maintain that the first words were merely a clearing of the ideas, a sort of talking to oneself. This may have been so or not, at any rate it appears to me that in such primitive times, practical ends deserve the first consideration. No one can distinguish the difference in the stages of mental development, between wiping the perspiration from the brow after work, which signifies and communicates to every observer, "It is warm" or "I am tired," and the man who can actually say, "It is warm," "I am tired." Thousands, millions of years may lie between these two steps. We do not know, and to attempt to fix periods of time where the means are lacking, is like pouring water into the Danaids' sieves.

This may appear to be a very small step, just as the first slight deviation in a railroad track is scarcely a finger's breadth, but in time changes the course of the train to an entirely different part of the world. The formation of an idea, such as to be, or to become, or to take a still simpler one, such as four or eight, appears to us to be a very small matter, and yet it is this very small matter that distinguishes man from the animal, that pushed man forward and left the animal behind on his old track. Nay, more, this "concept" has caused much shaking of the head among philosophers of all times. That one and one are two, two and two, four, four and four, eight, eight and eight, sixteen, etc., appears to be so very easy, that we do not understand how such things can constitute an eternally intended distinction between man and animal. I have myself seen an ape so well trained that as the word "seven" was spoken, he picked up seven straws. But what is such child's play in comparison with the first formation of the idea of seven? Do you not see that the formation of such an abstract idea, isolating mere quantity apart from all qualities, requires a power of abstraction such as has never been displayed by an animal? If there were any languages now that actually had no word for seven, it would be a valuable confirmation of this view. I doubt only, whether the speakers of such languages could not call composition to their aid, and attain the idea of seven by two, two, two, plus one. We still know too little of these languages and of those who speak them. Of what takes place in animals we know absolutely nothing, and nowhere would a dose of agnosticism be more useful than here. Sense-impressions an animal certainly has; whether quite the same as man must remain uncertain. And sense-impressions enable an animal to accomplish much, especially in the realm of feeling; but language--never.

If we have the ideas and the words, the process of thought, as Hobbes has taught us, is nothing but an addition and subtraction of ideas. We add when we say, A is B; when we say, for instance, man, or Caius, is mortal, adding Caius, or man, to all that we call mortal; we subtract when we say, A is not B; that is, when we abstract Enoch from all that we call mortal. Everything that man has ever thought, humiliating as it may sound, consists in these two operations; just as the most abstruse operations of mathematics go back in the end to addition and subtraction. To what else could they go back? Whether these mental operations are true or false, is another question, with which the method of the thinker has nothing to do; any more than formal logic inquires whether all men are mortal, but only infers on the basis of these premises that Caius, because he is a man, is also mortal.

The Reasonableness Of Religion

There are so many things that have been so long settled among scholars that they are scarcely mentioned, while to a great majority of even well-informed people they are still enveloped in a misty gloom. To this class belong especially the so-called articles of faith. We must not forget that with many, even with most men, faith is not faith, but acquired habit. Why otherwise should the son of a Jew be a Jew, the son of a Parsi a Parsi? Moreover, no one likes to be disturbed in his old habits. There are questions, too, on which mankind as it is now constituted will never reach a common understanding, because they lie outside the realm of science or the knowable. Concerning such questions it is well to waste no more words. But it is on just such a question, namely, the true nature of revelation, that the Horseherd and his companions particularly wish to know my views. The current theory of revelation is their greatest stumbling block, and they continually direct their principal attack against this ancient stronghold. On the other hand there is nothing so convenient as this theory, and many who have no other support cling fast to this anchor. The Bible is divine revelation, say they, therefore it is infallible and unassailable, and that settles everything.

I am not one of those who pretend to find no difficulties in all these questions. On the contrary, I have wrestled with them for years, and remember well the joy I felt when first the true historical meaning of the opening of the Fourth Gospel, "In the beginning was the word," became clear to me. It is true that I turned no somersaults like the Horseherd, but I was well satisfied. I do not therefore consider the objections raised by him as unfounded or without justification; on the contrary, it were better if others would speak with the same freedom as he has done, although a calmer tone in such matters would be more effective than the fortissimo of the Horseherd.

What aided me most in the solution of these religious or theological difficulties, was a comparative study of the religions of mankind. In spite of their differences, they are all afflicted with the same ailments, and when we find that we encounter the same difficulties in other religions as those with which we are ourselves contending, it is safe to consider them as deeply rooted in human nature, and in this same nature, be it weak or strong, to seek their solution. As comparative philology has proved that many of the irregular nouns and verbs are really the most regular and ancient, so it is with the irregular, that is, the miraculous occurrences in the history of religion. Indeed, we may now say that it would be a miracle if there were anywhere any religion without miracles, or if the Scriptures on which any religion is based were not presented by the priests and accepted by the believers as of superhuman, even divine origin, and therefore infallible. In all these matters we must seek for the reasons, and in this manner endeavour to understand their truth as well as error.

Other correspondents, such as Agnosticus, declare all revelation a chimera; in short, there has been no lack of expressions subversive of Christianity, and, in fact, of all revealed religion.

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