or half a year old; of course not otherwise_.)

"A 'creation' in the sense of the various religions is equally
incomprehensible to us. (_Certainly._)

"But I do not wish to enlarge on this point any farther. Here begins the
limit of our thinking faculties, and it is the defect of all religions
that they require us to occupy ourselves with matters that lie beyond this
limit, that never can be revealed to us, since we are denied the
understanding of them; a revelation is at all events a chimera. For either
that which is to be revealed lies beyond our senses and ideas,--and then it
cannot be revealed to us,--or it lies on this side, and then it need not be
revealed to us. (_This is not directed against me._)

"I believe, moreover, dear sir, that through your comparative studies of
religion you must reach the same conclusion as myself, that all religious
ideas have arisen solely in the brain of man himself, as efforts at
explanation in the broadest sense; that dogmas were made out of
hypotheses, and that no religion as a matter of fact reveals anything to
us. (_Not only religious ideas, but all ideas have arisen in the brain._)

"You express a profound truth when you say that atheism is properly a
search for a _truer_ God. I was reminded by it of a passage in one of
Daudet's novels, in which the blasphemy of one who despairs of a good God,
is yet called a kind of prayer. You will therefore bear with me if I
explain to you how a scientific man who thinks consistently can reach a
conclusion not far removed from that which prompted the Horseherd to turn
a somersault.

"Good and evil are purely human notions; an almighty God stands beyond
good and evil. He is as incomprehensible to us in moral relations as in
every other. (_From the highest point of view, yes; but in the lives of
men there is such a distinction._)

"Only look at the world! The existence of the majority of living creatures
is possible only through the destruction of others. What refined cruelty
is expressed by the various weapons with which animals are provided. Some
zooelogist ought to write an illustrated work entitled, _The Torture
Chamber of Nature_. I merely wish to touch upon this field; to exhaust it
would require pages and volumes. Your adopted countryman, Wallace, seeks,
it is true, to set aside these facts by a superficial observation. That
most of the animals that are doomed to be devoured, enjoy their lives
until immediately before the catastro