ockroach is music to my ears. But when the day comes to
turn the prisoners of the zoo out of their cages, if it is only to lead
them to the swifter, kinder knife of the _schochet_, I shall be present
and rejoicing, and if any one present thinks to suggest that it would be
a good plan to celebrate the day by shooting the whole zoo faculty, I
shall have a revolver in my pocket and a sound eye in my head.
XXXVII
ON HEARING MOZART
The only permanent values in the world are truth and beauty, and of
these it is probable that truth is lasting only in so far as it is a
function and manifestation of beauty--a projection of feeling in terms
of idea. The world is a charnel house of dead religions. Where are all
the faiths of the middle ages, so complex and yet so precise? But all
that was essential in the beauty of the middle ages still lives....
This is the heritage of man, but not of men. The great majority of men
are not even aware of it. Their participation in the progress of the
world, and even in the history of the world, is infinitely remote and
trivial. They live and die, at bottom, as animals live and die. The
human race, as a race, is scarcely cognizant of their existence; they
haven't even definite number, but stand grouped together as _x_, the
quantity unknown ... and not worth knowing.
XXXVIII
THE ROAD TO DOUBT
The first effect of what used to be called natural philosophy is to fill
its devotee with wonder at the marvels of God. This explains why the
pursuit of science, so long as it remains superficial, is not
incompatible with the most naif sort of religious faith. But the moment
the student of the sciences passes this stage of childlike amazement and
begins to investigate the inner workings of natural phenomena, he begins
to see how ineptly many of them are managed, and so he tends to pass
from awe of the Creator to criticism of the Creator, and once he has
crossed that bridge he has ceased to be a believer. One finds plenty of
neighborhood physicians, amateur botanists, high-school physics teachers
and other such quasi-scientists in the pews on Sunday, but one never
sees a Huxley there, or a Darwin, or an Ehrlich.
XXXIX
A NEW USE FOR CHURCHES
The argument by design, it may be granted, establishes a reasonable
ground for accepting the existence of God. It makes belief, at all
events, quite as intelligible as unbelief. But when the theologians take
their step from the e
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