r
than a horse when he goes to hunt a fox. Logical machinery cannot
follow the movement of the live spirit, nor arrest it even for a
moment's inspection. Within its own province the rule of the
traditional logic is, indeed, absolute. But to make that province
co-extensive with the realm of truth, to extend the laws which govern
it into the universal laws of spirit is a fatal pedantry. So extended,
our logic leads not to truth but to falsehood and, ultimately, to the
paralysis of the very thought it seeks to regulate, nay, to the
extinction of thought itself. This procedure has no claim whatever to
usurp the name of "reason," but rather stands condemned as the very
type of what is unreasonable. Let those who deny this prove, if they
can, in terms acceptable to universal reason, that it would "not be
better for the world at large if their necks were wrung five minutes
hence."

There is a coward and a hero in the breast of every man. Each of the
pair has a "logic" of his own adapted to his particular purpose and
aim--which is safety for the coward and victory for the hero. The two
are perpetually at variance, the reason of the one being the unreason
of the other, the truth of the one being the falsehood of the other.
The inner strife, the division in our nature, the law in our members
warring against the law of our mind, on which so many great doctrines
of religion have hinged, has its origin at this point. Anyone who
watches himself narrowly may observe the strife going on, and going on
in just this form,--as an argument between the coward within him, who
is out for safety, and the hero within him, who is out for victory.
They have little common ground and can barely understand each other's
speech.

Everything the hero proposes is unreasonable to the coward. Everything
the coward proposes is detestable to the hero. The hero would pour
spikenard on the head of his beloved--that would be victorious. The
coward would sell it and give the money to the poor--that would be
"safer." The coward sees a danger in having children and limits his
family. The hero would have many sons. On all such points the coward,
judged by the standard of what passes muster as logic, is a better
reasoner than the hero. But the hero, though he has less to say for
himself, when brought before the seat of judgment, is nearer to the
fountain head of Reason. Would not the offence of the Cross, submitted
at the time to a sanhedrim of