f without it; see if He will let you reclaim them.
Take Catholic doctrine for granted; act on it; and see if you will
not reclaim them!'

'Take for granted? Am I to come, after all, to implicit faith?'

'Implicit fiddlesticks! Did you ever read the Novum Organum?
Mellot told me that you were a geologist.'

'Well?'

'You took for granted what you read in geological books, and went to
the mine and the quarry afterwards, to verify it in practice; and
according as you found fact correspond to theory, you retained or
rejected. Was that implicit faith, or common sense, common
humility, and sound induction?'

'Sound induction, at least.'

'Then go now, and do likewise. Believe that the learned, wise, and
good, for 1800 years, may possibly have found out somewhat, or have
been taught somewhat, on this matter, and test their theory by
practice. If a theory on such a point is worth anything at all, it
is omnipotent and all-explaining. If it will not work, of course
there is no use keeping it a moment. Perhaps it will work. I say
it will.'

'But I shall not work it; I still dread my own spectacles. I dare
not trust myself alone to verify a theory of Murchison's or Lyell's.
How dare I trust myself in this?'

'Then do not trust yourself alone: come and see what others are
doing. Come, and become a member of a body which is verifying, by
united action, those universal and eternal truths, which are too
great for the grasp of any one time-ridden individual. Not that we
claim the gift of infallibility, any more than I do that of perfect
utterance of the little which we do know.'

'Then what do you promise me in asking me to go with you?'

'Practical proof that these my words are true,--practical proof that
they can make a nation all that England might be and is not,--the
sight of what a people might become who, knowing thus far, do what
they know. We believe no more than you, but we believe it. Come
and see!--and yet you will not see; facts, and the reasons of them,
will be as impalpable to you there as here, unless you can again
obey your Novum Organum.'

'How then?'

'By renouncing all your idols--the idols of the race and of the
market, of the study and of the theatre. Every national prejudice,
every vulgar superstition, every remnant of pedantic system, every
sentimental like or dislike, must be left behind you, for the
induction of the world problem. You must empty y