Page:Religion of a Sceptic (IA religionofscepti00powy).djvu/33

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THE RELIGION OF A SCEPTIC

bration of Mass is arresting and startling as no theological discourse can possibly be, what the sceptic makes use of to resist the temptation to commit himself any further is not just simply his "reason."

It is necessary to be quite clear about this point. An apologist for religion might say: "If you go as far as this why will you not go the whole way?"

Our reply to this is whole-hearted enough. "I will not go the whole way because it is not only with my reason that I object to 'practising religion.' It is with my imagination, with my instinct, with my intuition, with my æsthetic sense, with my emotional sense, with every vague, subtle, evasive, spiritual intimation which I possess!"

It is precisely here that the attitude of mind we are considering, an attitude that instinctively selects the humanistic philosophy of Shakespeare as its ideal, separates itself from the type of temperament, like that of Huysmans on the one hand or Chesterton on the other, which does eventually commit itself.

Such a plunge would be, as far as we are concerned, a betrayal of our inmost integrity, a sacrifice of the rhythm of our nature to a pathological craving.

What it really amounts *o is this, that the humanistic scepticism, whose massive and yet

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