zed the law of gravitation as a weapon against
religion.

Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of
inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good and evil,
and all the institutions of state and church that have been built up on
those conceptions.

So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of the law of
inevitability today use that law as a weapon against religion, though
the law of inevitability in history, like the law of Copernicus in
astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens the foundation on which
the institutions of state and church are erected.

As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of history
now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the recognition or
nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the measure of visible
phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability of the earth, in history
it is the independence of personality--free will.

As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the earth
lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth's fixity and of
the motion of the planets, so in history the difficulty of recognizing
the subjection of personality to the laws of space, time, and cause
lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the independence of one's own
personality. But as in astronomy the new view said: "It is true that we
do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility
we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not
feel) we arrive at laws," so also in history the new view says: "It is
true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our
free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on
the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws."

In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an
unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel;
in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom
that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not
conscious.

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