Meanwhile the reprobate need not fear hell in the next world, but the
elect are sure to find it here.
What shall we say of this strangely unreal and strangely personal
religion? Is it a ghost of Calvinism, returned with none of its old
force but with its old aspect of rigidity? Perhaps: but then, in
losing its force, in abandoning its myths, and threats, and rhetoric,
this religion has lost its deceptive sanctimony and hypocrisy; and in
retaining its rigidity it has kept what made it noble and pathetic;
for it is a clear dramatic expression of that human spirit--in this
case a most pure and heroic spirit--which it strives so hard to
dethrone. After all, the hypostasis of the good is only an
unfortunate incident in a great accomplishment, which is the
discernment of the good. I have dwelt chiefly on this incident,
because in academic circles it is the abuses incidental to true
philosophy that create controversy and form schools. Artificial
systems, even when they prevail, after a while fatigue their
adherents, without ever having convinced or refuted their opponents,
and they fade out of existence not by being refuted in their turn, but
simply by a tacit agreement to ignore their claims: so that the true
insight they were based on is too often buried under them.
Pages:
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197