heological asceticism and
scientific asceticism. And it is the duty of the freethinker clearly to
point out why this confusion has arisen. During the ages of faith, the
world beheld a swarm of men and women who retired from the grim
realities of a world which at that time was made abhorrent to all
sensitive men by the most exacting insistence of theologians that
"faith" was the all necessary ingredient of life, and that closed its
eyes completely to the degrading actualities of life that this
insistence led to. Multitudes of men retired to the desert and to the
protective walls of monasteries. There, by constant privations,
fastings, continual prayer, flagellation, and introspection, they spent
their lives. These ascetic individuals by these means were enabled to
enter what may be called a "theologic trance" and their subsequent
hallucinations, illusions, and delusions gave to them what they deemed
to be a transcendental insight into the construction of the universe
and what was expected between "fallen" and debased man and his
omnipotent creator. These men keenly apprehended what some today, in a
gentler age, have called "cosmic consciousness."

I do not mean to imply that these before-mentioned scientists have
applied such a rigor to their lives. What is meant to be stated is that
these men by their research and comprehension of the vastness of the
universe stand in awe and fear before this brain-benumbing aspect.
Modern astrophysics, to one who attempts to comprehend its vastness,
imposes on the mind but a faint comprehension of the vastness of the
universe in space, time, and size; but imposes a deep conviction of the
infinitesimal meaning of our planet Earth, both as to size and its
relation to the millions of related heavenly bodies. The evolution of
man on our planet in this broad conception of space and time is most
infinitesimal. It has been just a few hours ago in this widened
conception of time that Halley's comet was excommunicated from the skies
by Pope Calixitus III, who looked upon this comet as one of unheard-of
magnitude and from the tail of which was flung down upon the earth,
disease, pestilence, and war.

Most certainly the minds of Jeans and Eddington carry in their recesses
a vast amount of knowledge that was not common to men living in 1456,
the year in which the above-mentioned comet caused such consternation.
Much as one admires the superiority of the minds of these present-day
physicists, yet