he canvas of ignorance by that artist called Superstition.
From these ghosts our fathers received their information. These ghosts
were the schoolmasters of our ancestors. They were the scientists, the
philosophers, the geologists, the legislators, the astronomers, the
physicians, the metaphysicians and historians of the past.

Let me give you my definition of metaphysics, that is to say, the
science of the unknown, the science of guessing. Metaphysics is where
two fools get together, and each one admits that neither can prove, and
both say, "Hence we infer." That is the science of metaphysics. For
this these ghosts were supposed to have the only experience and real
knowledge; they inspired men to write books, and the books were sacred.
If facts were found to be inconsistent with these books, so much the
worse for the facts, and especially for the discoverers of these facts.
It was then and still is believed that these sacred books are the basis
of the idea of immortality, to give up the idea that these books were
inspired is and to renounce the idea of immortal life. I deny it! Men
existed before books; and all the books that were ever written were
written, in my judgment, by men, and the idea of immortality was not
born of a book, but was born of the man who wrote the book. The idea
of immortality, like the great sea, has ebbed and flowed in the human
heart, beating its countless waves of hope and joy against the shores
of time, and was not born of any book, nor of any religion, nor of any
creed; it was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and
flow beneath the clouds and mists of doubt and darkness as long as love
kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow of hope shining upon the
tears of grief. We love, therefore we wish to live, and the foundation
of the idea of immortality is human affection and human love, and I
have a thousand times more confidence in the affections of the human
heart, in the deep and splendid feelings of the human soul than I have
in any book that ever was or ever can be written by mortal man.

From the books written by those ghosts we have at least ascertained
that they knew nothing whatever of the world in which we live. Did they
know anything about any other? Upon every point where contradiction is
possible, the ghosts have been contradicted. By these ghosts, by these
citizens of the air, by this aristocracy of the clouds the affairs of
government were administered