“They are all quacks,” she said.
“They must needs be seekers, and the best they can produce, is out of themselves, and that conjecture. From the depths of the intellect what can be brought up than a more or less plausible guess?”
“And on these guesses we must live, like those who float across the Tigris and Euphrates—on rafts supported by inflated bladders. There is then no solid ground?”
“Man inflates the bladders—God lays the rocky basis.”
“What mean you?”
“No certainty can be attained, in all these things man desires to know, the basis of hope, the foundation of morality, that cannot be brought out of man. It can only be known by revelation of God.”
“And till he reveals we must drift on wind-bags. Good lack!”
“Do you think, Lady, that He who made man, and planted in man’s heart a desire for a future life, and made it necessary for his welfare that he should know to discern between good and evil, should leave him forever in the dark—like as you said Theseus in the labyrinth, without a clue?”
“But where is the clue?”
“Or think you that He who launched the vessel of man, having carefully laid the keel and framed the ribs, and set in her a pilot, should send her forth into unknown seas to certain wreckage—to be wafted up and down by every wind—to be carried along by every current—to fall on reefs, or be engulfed by quicksands, and not to reach a port, and He not to set lights whereby her course may be directed?”