em rationalists.
There are no rationalists. We all believe fairy-tales, and live in
them. Some, with a sumptuous literary turn, believe in the existence of
the lady clothed with the sun. Some, with a more rustic, elvish
instinct, like Mr. McCabe, believe merely in the impossible sun itself.
Some hold the undemonstrable dogma of the existence of God; some the
equally undemonstrable dogma of the existence of the man next door.

Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every
man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our
time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives
them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are
Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been
disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in
patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little
more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be
right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common
sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers
pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go
on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is
a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a
religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are
all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all
awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four.
Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall
be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of
human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible
universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible
prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible
grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who
have seen and yet have believed.

THE END

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