"Can you," I asked, "state an instance in which what you indicate as premature education of the masses in agnostic ideas, might lead to injury to the persons so instructed, or to society at large?"
"Yes, sir, I can. Your ignorant American—the 'cracker' element of the South, your ignorant Italian, and your ignorant Irishman are injured by taking away their religious beliefs. The first of these, when church people, dress neatly, are honorable, and have some upward-tending ambitions; whilst those of them that are infidels are reduced—men and women—to a state of ambitionless inertia and tobacco saturation—if no worse. The two latter are either under religious control, or under secret-society control. If the lower-class Irishman or Italian, unendowed with judgment to rightly use the little knowledge he already possesses—to properly interpret his own feelings or guide his own impulses—has not his church with its priestly control, he will have his secret-society with its secret executive control, its bovine fury, and its senseless pertinacity, the poison-bowl and the dagger. For my part, if a man must either seek liberty from ambush, and learn independence through treachery, or else be on his knees before a graven image, suited to his mental calibre—let us keep him on his knees till he can rise to something better than murder. Why, sir, an Irish Republican (a rarity)—an editor, once said to me that some of our Irish emigrants have hair on their teeth when they get to America; and, though I may be wrong, I never see an Italian organ-grinder without first thinking of a dagger between my ribs, and then settling down to a comfortable feeling that if the fellow's a Catholic the confessional stands between me and such a danger. The man who attempts to teach such fellows about complete liberty should be responsible for any consequent acts."
"Still, doctor," I said, "the road to universal knowledge cannot be all smooth. Ground must be broken by somebody. If there is anything in Christianity that bars the way to final freedom of mind for the whole human race, then I myself say, clear away the obstructions—the work cannot begin too soon or continue too vigorously."
"I see nothing in true Christianity but good for the human race—surely you speak only to call out my own views. If there is anything in any church policy or polity which requires reforming, let it be reformed."
"Excuse me, doctor," I said; "but I had thought you yourself an agnostic. Do you not think that if a religion will not bear the test of cold reason, it should be discarded from the lives of men?"
"No, I do not. The human mind is not comprised in intellect alone—it has its moral or emotional side, wholly apart from reason. Religion is not to be reasoned about—it is to be felt. No founder of a religion ever claimed for it a place in man's reason. Now just think for a minute. Let us leave the ignorant, and consider what the best of men are—men who have attained a mental cultivation certainly as great as will ever be possible to the masses. Take the very highest society in England and America—to what extent are its members controlled by reason, and to what extent by feeling and by the fixed sentiments growing out of feeling? Ratiocination does not influence one of their actions in a million. There is not within my knowledge a single instance where a purely rational conception has been the basis of practice, in opposition to feeling."
"Surely," I said, "you do not mean to say that educated men are not governed in the main by reason?"
"I mean just what I say—that I do not know, in practice, a single instance in which they are so governed in opposition to feeling. Pshaw, pshaw! young man; if we are to compel the acts of practical daily life to conform with a dialectic demonstration of what is best for us—to do only what is in reason best for us—we must simply cease to live, though we do continue to breathe. Even in physics, of what use are logical demonstrations, when the premises are only a foundation more unstable than quicksand—purely provisional?
"Now if these agnostics were truthful—which they try to be; and were consistent—which they are not, they would be in a trying situation. Reason shows no advantage to a man in kissing his wife; he has no syllogistic endorsement for supporting her and the children; in fact, he has no business to have children—all the result of feeling or sentiment, all rubbish, and beneath the intellect of a man who worships Pure Reason! And if the demands of man's moral or affectional nature are a reason for such indulgences, then his aspirations to the great primal cause of the known, the unknown, and (to us here and now) unknowable wonders and mysteries of the universe without, and of ourselves within, is also justifiable in reason, and ought not by wit and eloquence to be juggled out of the ingenuous mind. The masses are governed by religion, directly and indirectly, to an extent much greater than at first thought appears. The daily life of the agnostic himself is shaped by his Christian heredity and environment. Now our Author furnishes no substitute for this intuitive demand of being. If reason can supply nothing in place of religion, why not allow those who possess religious conviction to retain so agreeable, and to others beneficial, a belief?—Now right here I can detect the voice of the agnostic agitator—this is his strongest situation, and he simply smiles when you make this opening for him. The voice says, 'Agreeable? Agreeable to burn forever in hell? Well, well, my friend—our ideas of pleasure differ.' This is sophistical twaddle. It is not the Christian that suffers from a fear of hell—it is the sinner, through his guilty conscience. Conscience, conscience; the only barrier between us and hell on earth! Christians are comforted by the thought of a loving Christ—Christians, in my experience, do not suffer."
"Why, sir," I said, "I cannot but wonder that you are not yourself a professed Christian."