common
which by association so enlarges and fortifies the individual good? Why
should one not behave with respect to religion as he does in other
parts of life? It is our habit elsewhere in all quarters to recognize
beyond ourselves an ampler knowledge, a maturer judgment, a more
efficient will enacting our own choice. To obey by force is a childish
or a slavish act, but intelligently and willingly to accept authority
within just limits is the reasonable and practical act of a free man in
society; the recognition of this by a youth marks his attainment of
intellectual majority. Authority, in all its modes, is the bond of the
commonwealth; until the youth comprehends it he is a ward; thereafter he
is either a rebel or a citizen, as he lists. For us, born to the largest
measure of freedom society has ever known, there is little fear lest the
principle of authority should prove a dangerous element. The right of
private judgment, which is, I believe, the vital principle of the
intellectual life, is the first to be exercised by our young men who
lead that life; and quite in the spirit of that education which would
repeat in the child the history of the race, we are scarce out of the
swaddling bands of the primer and catechism before we would remove all
questions to the court of our own jurisdiction. The mind is not a
_tabula rasa_ at birth, we learn, but, so soon as may be, we will remedy
that, and erase all records copied there. The treasure doors of our
fathers' inheritance are thrown open to us; but we will weigh each gold
piece with balance and scale. All that libraries contain, all that
institutions embody, all the practice of life which, in its innocence,
mankind has adopted as things of use and wont, shall be certified by our
scrutiny. So in youth we say, and what results? What do the best become?
Incapables, detached from the sap of life, forced to escape to the
intellectual limbo of a suspension of judgment, extending till it fills
heaven and earth. We no longer discuss opinions even; the most we can
attain to is an attitude of mind. In view of the vast variety of phases
in which even man's great ideas have been held, a sense of indifference
among them, a vacuity in all, grows up. Pilate's question, 'What is
truth?' ends all.

"This is the extreme penalty of the heroic sceptical resolve in strong
and constant minds; commonly those who would measure man's large scope
by the gauge of their own ability and experience