Ebook Little Journeys

HE canons of scientific evidence justify us neither in accepting nor rejecting the ideas upon which morality and religion repose. Both parties to the dispute beat the air; they worry their own shadow; for they pass from nature into the domain of speculation where their dogmatic grips find nothing to lay hold upon. The shadows which they how to pieces grow together in a moment like the heroes in Walhalla, to rejoice anew in bloodless battles. Metaphysics can no longer claim to be the comer-stone of religion and morality. But if she cannot be the Atlas that bears the moral world she can furnish a magic defense. Around the ideas of religion she throws her bulwark of invisibility; and the sword of the sceptic, and the battering-ram of the materialist fall harmless on vacuity. Lecture on the search.