said, it was absurd; and practically, it was an offence, over which he
stumbled. It would have been far better for mankind, he thought, if they
could have kept clear of superstition, and followed on upon the track of
the Grecian philosophy. So little do men care to understand the
conditions which have made them what they are, and which has created for
them that very wisdom in which they themselves are so contented. But it
is strange, indeed, that a person who could deliberately adopt such a
conclusion should trouble himself any more to look for truth. If a mere
absurdity could make its way out of a little fishing village in Galilee,
and spread through the whole civilised world; if men are so pitiably
silly, that in an age of great mental activity their strongest thinkers
should have sunk under an abortion of fear and folly, should have
allowed it to absorb into itself whatever of heroism, of devotion,
self-sacrifice, and moral nobleness there was among them; surely there
were nothing better for a wise man than to make the best of his time,
and to crowd what enjoyment he can find into it, sheltering himself in a
very disdainful Pyrrhonism from all care for mankind or for their
opinions. For what better test of truth have we than the ablest men's
acceptance of it? and if the ablest men eighteen centuries ago
deliberately accepted what is now too absurd to reason upon, what right
have we to hope that with the same natures, the same passions, the same
understandings, no better proof against deception, we, like they, are
not entangled in what, at the close of another era, shall seem again
ridiculous? The scoff of Cicero at the divinity of Liber and Ceres
(bread and wine) may be translated literally by the modern Protestant;
and the sarcasms which Clement and Tertullian flung at the Pagan creed,
the modern sceptic returns upon their own. Of what use is it to destroy
an idol, when another, or the same in another form, takes immediate
possession of the vacant pedestal?

I shall not argue with the extravagant hypothesis of my friend. In the
opinion even of Goethe, who was not troubled with credulity, the human
race can never attain to anything higher than Christianity--if we mean
by Christianity the religion which was revealed to the world in the
teaching and the life of its Founder. But even the more limited
reprobation by our own Reformers of the creed of mediaeval Europe is not
more just or philosophical.

Ptolemy was not pe