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SECTION III.

THE AUTHORITY OF REASON.

Death alone can wholly ratify any religion; yet we must live by reason, and in the hope or fear of reason we must die. We see with the eye, we hear with the ear,—so do we judge and speculate with reason upon the understanding. The eye never was superseded as the seer, nor the ear as the hearer—for with nought else can we see or hear; yet both may have misled us: neither shall reason lose its position as the final and supreme judge, although two men's reasons may disagree, and both be in error. Denying the authority of reason, who is it that denies? Is it not reason defaming itself? Though we condemn all ratiocination of the past, we are but commending our present reason the more. An unsound judge cannot presently give sound judgment against himself. A serpent may bolt a goat of thrice his weight: but until he can take his own tail in his mouth, swallow himself, and bodily disappear, shall reason be the arbiter of truth. (How strange that aught so plain should need to be repeated!)

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