nce of each other. Their "authority"
in the legal sense varies as the closeness of their mutual dependence.
As the consent loses its value logically, it gains in power of
coercion. And therefore it is easy to substitute drilling for arguing,
and to take up a belief as you accept admission to a society, as a
matter of taste and feeling, with which abstract logic has nothing to
do. The common dilemma--you must be a Catholic or an atheist--means,
that theology is only tenable if you drill people into belief by a vast
organisation appealing to other than logical motives.

I do not argue these points: I only indicate what I take to be your own
conviction as well as mine. It seems to me, in fact, that the present
state of mind--if we look to men's real thoughts and actions, not to
their conventional phrases--is easily definable. It is simply a tacit
recognition that the old orthodoxy cannot be maintained either by the
evidence of facts or by philosophical argument. It has puzzled me
sometimes to understand why the churches should insist upon nailing
themselves down to the truth of their dogmas and their legendary
history. Why cannot they say frankly, what they seem to be constantly
on the verge of saying--Our dogmas and our history are not true, or not
"true" in the historical or scientific sense of the word? To ask for
such truth in the sphere of theology is as pedantic as to ask for it in
the sphere of poetry. Poetical truth means, not that certain events
actually happened, or that the poetical "machinery" is to be taken as
an existing fact; but that the poem is, so to speak, the projection of
truths upon the cloudland of imagination. It reflects and gives
sensuous images of truth; but it is only the Philistine or the
blockhead who can seriously ask, is it true? Some such position seems
to be really conceivable as an ultimate compromise. Put aside the
prosaic insistence upon literal matter-of-fact truth, and we may all
agree to use the same symbolism, and interpret it as we please. This
seems to me to be actually the view of many thoughtful people, though
for obvious reasons it is not often explicitly stated. One reason is,
of course, the consciousness that the great mass of mankind requires
plain, tangible motives for governing its life; and if it once be
admitted that so much of the orthodox doctrine is mere symbolism or
adumbration of truths, the admission would involve the loss of the
truths so indicated. Moral conduct,