ividual, man,
who is in his turn a kind of society, possesses senses lacking in the
cells of which he is composed. The blind cells of hearing, in their dim
consciousness, must of necessity be unaware of the existence of the
visible world, and if they should hear it spoken of they would perhaps
deem it to be the arbitrary creation of the deaf cells of sight, while
the latter in their turn would consider as illusion the audible world
which the hearing cells create.

We have remarked before that the parasites which live in the intestines
of higher animals, feeding upon the nutritive juices which these animals
supply, do not need either to see or hear, and therefore for them the
visible and audible world does not exist. And if they possessed a
certain degree of consciousness and took account of the fact that the
animal at whose expense they live believed in a world of sight and
hearing, they would perhaps deem such belief to be due merely to the
extravagance of its imagination. And similarly there are social
parasites, as Mr. A.J. Balfour admirably observes,[10] who, receiving
from the society in which they live the motives of their moral conduct,
deny that belief in God and the other life is a necessary foundation for
good conduct and for a tolerable life, society having prepared for them
the spiritual nutriment by which they live. An isolated individual can
endure life and live it well and even heroically without in any sort
believing either in the immortality of the soul or in God, but he lives
the life of a spiritual parasite. What we call the sense of honour is,
even in non-Christians, a Christian product. And I will say further,
that if there exists in a man faith in God joined to a life of purity
and moral elevation, it is not so much the believing in God that makes
him good, as the being good, thanks to God, that makes him believe in
Him. Goodness is the best source of spiritual clear-sightedness.

I am well aware that it may be objected that all this talk of man
creating the sensible world and love the ideal world, of the blind cells
of hearing and the deaf cells of sight, of spiritual parasites, etc., is
merely metaphor. So it is, and I do not claim to discuss otherwise than
by metaphor. And it is true that this social sense, the creature of
love, the creator of language, of reason, and of the ideal world that
springs from it, is at bottom nothing other than what we call fancy or
imagination. Out of fancy springs