'
'Maybe you are right. The inability to obtain mere pleasure has not
produced the misery which has been begotten of mistaken or baffled
self-sacrifice. But do you mean to say that you would like to enlist
under Mazzini?'
'No!'
Baruch thought she referred to her child, and he was silent.
'You are a philosopher,' said Madge, after a pause. 'Have you never
discovered anything which will enable us to submit to be useless?'
'That is to say, have I discovered a religion? for the core of
religion is the relationship of the individual to the whole, the
faith that the poorest and meanest of us is a person. That is the
real strength of all religions.'
'Well, go on; what do you believe?'
'I can only say it like a creed; I have no demonstration, at least
none such as I would venture to put into words. Perhaps the highest
of all truths is incapable of demonstration and can only be stated.
Perhaps, also, the statement, at least to some of us, is a sufficient
demonstration. I believe that inability to imagine a thing is not a
reason for its non-existence. If the infinite is a conclusion which
is forced upon me, the fact that I cannot picture it does not
disprove it. I believe, also, in thought and the soul, and it is
nothing to me that I cannot explain them by attributes belonging to
body. That being so, the difficulties which arise from the perpetual
and unconscious confusion of the qualities of thought and soul with
those of body disappear.
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