e in
favour of fixed rules and clear dogmas. The _rules_ of a club are
occasionally in favour of the poor member. The drift of a club is always
in favour of the rich one.

And now we come to the crucial question which truly concludes the whole
matter. A reasonable agnostic, if he has happened to agree with me so
far, may justly turn round and say, "You have found a practical
philosophy in the doctrine of the Fall; very well. You have found a side
of democracy now dangerously neglected wisely asserted in Original Sin;
all right. You have found a truth in the doctrine of hell; I
congratulate you. You are convinced that worshippers of a personal God
look outwards and are progressive; I congratulate them. But even
supposing that those doctrines do include those truths, why cannot you
take the truths and leave the doctrines? Granted that all modern
society is trusting the rich too much because it does not allow for
human weakness; granted that orthodox ages have had a great advantage
because (believing in the Fall) they did allow for human weakness, why
cannot you simply allow for human weakness without believing in the
Fall? If you have discovered that the idea of damnation represents a
healthy idea of danger, why can you not simply take the idea of danger
and leave the idea of damnation? If you see clearly the kernel of
common-sense in the nut of Christian orthodoxy, why cannot you simply
take the kernel and leave the nut? Why cannot you (to use that cant
phrase of the newspapers which I, as a highly scholarly agnostic, am a
little ashamed of using) why cannot you simply take what is good in
Christianity, what you can define as valuable, what you can comprehend,
and leave all the rest, all the absolute dogmas that are in their nature
incomprehensible?" This is the real question; this is the last question;
and it is a pleasure to try to answer it.

The first answer is simply to say that I am a rationalist. I like to
have some intellectual justification for my intuitions. If I am treating
man as a fallen being it is an intellectual convenience to me to
believe that he fell; and I find, for some odd psychological reason,
that I can deal better with a man's exercise of freewill if I believe
that he has got it. But I am in this matter yet more definitely a
rationalist. I do not propose to turn this book into one of ordinary
Christian apologetics; I should be glad to meet at any other time the
enemies of Christianity in that m