Heredity, Variation and Genius 97 



they ever endured them, had without doubt their 

 reason and use of being ; they were in their day 

 the natural and necessary aids and means to 

 incite, sanction, sustain and further the social 

 stability and progress of the race. As also just as 

 necessarily were the persecutions and oppressions, 

 the wars, tortures and cruelties, all the unspeakable 

 sufferings, physical and mental, which, naturally 

 occasioned by them, constitute so large and 

 dismal a part of human history. One after 

 another they have died their natural deaths with 

 the progress of humamzation which advancing 

 civilization signifies. Hell with its rebellious 

 monarch and everlasting torments, once so useful 

 in Christendom as a terror to turn the wicked 

 man away from his wickedness, is banished to 

 decent oblivion as rationally incredible by those 

 who, nevertheless, when directly challenged believe 

 they believe it as an article of religious faith. 

 The intuition of faith is a voucher of truth in 

 them transcending the lame conclusions of reason, 

 enjoining on reason the pious duty of deliberately 

 debasing itself, justifying solemn belief in the 

 utmost imaginable unreason. The more incredi- 

 ble the thing is rationally the more surely I 

 believe it as an article of faith, such is the 

 reverent attitude of abject religious devotion.* 



* Faithfully obey, as the Jesuits are commanded to obey, 

 among other rules, this rule — "They must abandon all judg- 

 " ment of their own, be always ready to obey the Church of 

 " Rome, and believe that black is white, and white is black, if 



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