A WAIF AND ITS ADOPTION 



ing, but must be believed upon the testimony of 

 individual " spiritual " experience. That is but 

 a mystic way of saying that no man can be- 

 lieve a thought unless he makes himself believe 

 it. But when theologians are driven to this ex- 

 tremity, they get mad, tell us that their belief 

 is sacred to them, and that they do not care to 

 discuss the matter any further. They want to 

 continue their hypnotic slumber and are mad at 

 being shaken out of it. 



But nothing is sacred before the tribunal of 

 Natural Truth. Everything has to prove its 

 right to existence before this tribunal by natural 

 processes of reasoning, or stand convicted as an 

 imposture. By crawling behind the excuse that 

 this or that is sacred to them, the theologians and 

 their unreasoning herd merely acknowledge their 

 mental poverty and their lack of historical under- 

 standing. And they stand before the throne of 

 Natural Truth as self-convicted impostors, who 

 deceive themselves and others and bar the prog- 

 ress of the human mind to an understanding of 

 itself and of the universe. 



As a last clincher, we sometimes hear the de- 

 fiant assertion that wise men generally " do not 

 understand the word of God." That is what the 

 ruling classes have hurled in the face of all revo- 



171 



