th my position. Man is a social as well as an emotional
animal. Agnosticism is neither social nor emotional. It is
cold-blooded and indifferent at its best. It is simply a bundle of
doubts and negations. Men are bound together in social and fraternal
ties by what they affirm and believe in common. But they care nothing
for what they deny.

But having no creed to defend and no preconceived opinions to prove,
and being of studious habits, I was now prepared to study in search of
abstract truth for truth's own sake, ready to accept it from whatever
source it might come, and follow it wherever it might lead.

Without arrogating to myself any special merit or credit for taking
this course, I wish that all people would do the same. As I said in
the very beginning of this book, most people inherit their religious
beliefs, and there they stop. We are Baptists, or Methodists, or
Presbyterians, or Catholics, because we were born so. We transmit our
beliefs to our children, from generation to generation, each following
the faith of his ancestors, without ever stopping to inquire why, or
seek a reason. And if a thought is ever given to it, or any search
made, it is but rarely for abstract truth, but for the proofs that
support the inherited faith, the preconceived opinion. It is like one
going into his house and bolting the door on the inside. Nothing is
ever given out and nothing ever permitted to come in. This is exactly
why for centuries the world was drenched in Christian blood, shed by
Christian hands. Each had its infallible creed, to which all the world
must bow--or take the consequences.

It took me several years to get myself settled with anything like a
definite "creed of my own," tho I was never in the least disturbed
about it, and only gave it such time as I could spare from a busy
business and professional life. By this time I had reached such
definite conclusions as satisfied my own mind, tho I never,--after my
"crisis,"--held any opinion, and do not now, that I am not willing to
change at any time that evidence is furnished to justify it. In my
search for truth I found myself confronted with certain facts that
Agnosticism did not satisfactorily explain. These were facts of
Nature, of Man as a part of it, of man's nature, habits, history,
thoughts, conduct, and social relations,--in fact, all that pertains to
the phenomena of Nature and Human Life and Relations. The conclusions
I reached constitut