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Hereditary Genius
279
whether rightly or not has nothing to do with our inquiries—that it is
subjective, not objective. He argues that it is not self-consistent in its
action, inasmuch as it prompts different people in different ways, and
the same person in different ways at different times; that there is no
sharp demarcation between the promptings that are avowedly natural,
and those that are considered supernatural; lastly, that convictions of
right and wrong are misleading, inasmuch as a person who indulges in
them, without check from the reason, becomes a blind partisan, and
partisans on hostile sides feel them in equal strength. As to the sense
of consolation, derived from the creature of a fond imagination, he
will point to the experiences of the nursery, where the girl tells all its
griefs to its doll, converses with it, takes counsel with it, and is
consoled by it, putting unconsciously her own words into the mouth of
the doll. For these and similar reasons, which it is only necessary for
me to state and not to weigh, the thoroughgoing ideal sceptic
deliberately crushes those very sentiments and convictions which the
religious man prizes above all things. He pronounces them to be idols
created by the imagination, and therefore to be equally abhorred with
idols made by the hands, of grosser material.
Thus far, we have only pointed out an intellectual difference—a
matter of no direct service in itself, in solving the question on which
we are engaged, but of the utmost importance when the sceptic and
religious man are supposed to rest contentedly in their separate
conclusions. In order that a man may be a contented sceptic of the
most extreme type, he must have confidence in himself, that he is
qualified to stand absolutely alone in the presence of the severest
trials of life, and of the terrors of impending death. His nature must
have sufficient self-assertion and stoicism to make him believe that
he can act the whole of his part upon earth without assistance.
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