Losing belief in it and
its contents, we have lost absolutely nothing but that which the
traveller loses when the mirage, which has displayed cool waters and
green shades before him, melts swiftly away. There were no cool
fountains really there to allay his thirst, no flowery meadows for his
wearied limbs; his pleasure was delusion, and the wilderness is blank.
Rather the mirage with its pleasant illusion, is the human cry, than the
desert with its barrenness. Not so, is the friendly warning; seek not
vainly in the desert that which is not there, but turn rather to other
horizons and to surer hopes. Do not waste life clinging to
ecclesiastical dogmas which represent no eternal verities, but search
elsewhere for truth which may haply be found. What should we think of
the man who persistently repulsed the persuasion that two and two make
four from the ardent desire to believe that two and two make five? Whose
fault is it that two and two do make four and not five? Whose folly is
it that it should be more agreeable to think that two and two make five
than to know that they only make four? This folly is theirs who
represent the value of life as dependent on the reality of special
illusions, which they have religiously adopted. To discover that a
former belief is unfounded is to change nothing of the realities of
existence.
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