“The world spirit has been only a hundred years on this new path of development. Can you doubt, then, seeing its progression during a billion years, and how it has spread over ever new fields, that it will continue so to progress and so to spread into fields newer still?”
“I can not.”
The Craving for Truth
“YOU are a philosopher,” she said.
“No. I am a man who is sick of philosophy, at least transcendental philosophy. I want matter under my feet all the time. Philosophers make me giddy, swinging like spiders on threads over abysms of nothing, and weaving words into webs to catch—words which they mistake for thoughts.
“I am sick of religious theories, doctrines and dogmas, and gods. I want Truth that a plain man can understand. I never could understand the Christian creed as distinct from the teachings of Christ, and, what is more, I believe no one else can. Mahommedanism revolts me. Buddhism attracts me, yet I feel it to be as unfeeding to the truth-craving part of my nature as a soap-bubble to a starving man. Materialism that denies a god revolts me.”
“But you say you are sick of gods.”
“Yes, but I am more sick of materialists—all the rest of the religions are pretty much the same; they don’t satisfy me. Nothing has ever satisfied me but the faith I have struck out for myself and the philosophy that a little child can understand.”
“And that faith?”
The Essential Goodness of the World