."

"Does the human mind possess the power to believe or disbelieve, at
pleasure, any truths whatsoever."

"I am not prepared to answer: but I think it does, since it possesses
always the power of investigation."

"But, possibly, not the will to exercise the power. Take care lest
I beat you with your own weapons. I thought this very investigation
appeared to you a crime?"

"Your logic is too subtle," said the youth, "for my inexperience."

"Say, rather, my reasoning too close. Did I bear you down with sounding
words and weighty authorities, and confound your understanding with
hair-drawn distinctions, you would be right to retreat from the
battery."

"I have nothing to object to the fairness of your deductions," said
Theon. "But would not the doctrine be dangerous that should establish
our inability to help our belief; and might we not stretch the
principle, until we asserted our inability to help our actions?"

"We might, and with reason. But we will not now traverse the ethical
_pons asinorum_ of necessity--the most simple and evident of mortal
truths, and the most darkened, tortured, and belabored by moral
teachers. You inquire if the doctrine we have essayed to establish, be
not dangerous. I reply--not, if it be true.--Nothing is so dangerous
as error--nothing so safe as truth. A dangerous truth would be a
contradiction in terms, and an anomaly in things."

"But what is a truth?" said Theon.

"It is pertinently asked. A truth I consider to be an ascertained fact;
which truth would be changed to an error, the moment the fact, on which
it rested, was disproved."

"I see, then, no fixed basis for truth."

"It surely has the most fixed of all--the nature of things. And it
is only an imperfect insight into that nature which occasions all our
erroneous conclusions, whether in physics or morals."

"But where, if we discard the Gods and their will, as engraven on our
hearts, are our guides in the search after truth?"

"Our senses and our faculties as developed in and by the exercise of our
senses, are the only guides with which I am acquainted. And I do not
see why, even admitting a belief in the Gods, and in a superintending
Providence, the senses should not be viewed as the guides provided by
them, for our direction and instruction. But here is the evil attendant
on an ungrounded belief, whatever be its nature. The moment we take one
thing for granted, we take other things for granted; we are started in
a