No doubt it
would be dishonest in any of us now, who see clearly that Noah surely
did not lead all the animals two by two into the Ark, to say that we
believe he did so, on the ground that stories of that kind are rather
favourable to the spread of religion. No doubt such a story, and even
the fables essential to Christian theology, are now incredible to most
of us. But on the other hand it would be stupid to assume that what is
incredible to you or me now must always be incredible to mankind. What
was foolishness to the Greeks of St. Paul's day spread mightily among
them one or two hundred years later; and what is foolishness to the
modernist of to-day may edify future generations. The imagination is
suggestible and there is nothing men will not believe in matters of
religion. These rational persuasions by which we are swayed, the
conventions of unbelieving science and unbelieving history, are
superficial growths; yesterday they did not exist, to-morrow they may
have disappeared. This is a doctrine which the modernist philosophers
themselves emphasise, as does M. Bergson, whom some of them follow,
and say the Catholic church itself ought to follow in order to be
saved--for prophets are constitutionally without a sense of humour.
These philosophers maintain that intelligence is merely a convenient
method of picking one's way through the world of matter, that it is a
falsification of life, and wholly unfit to grasp the roots of it.
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