Page:Religion of a Sceptic (IA religionofscepti00powy).djvu/56

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THE RELIGION OF A SCEPTIC

can be as sceptical as we please as to the modicum of rational truth contained in such "facts." No scepticism can spoil their beauty because their beauty has become part of the life of the race.

Whatever they once were, they have gathered to themselves now that particular kind of "truth" that is more important than scientific discovery, the "truth," in other words, of a work of art.

What is this truth that is truer than reality; this reality that is truer than any observed law or sequence of laws?

It is something that once did not exist, but now does exist. It is something that has literally been created out of nothing; something that, once created, obtains for itself a subtle re-creative energy of its own.

The figure of Hamlet is more real in a very profound sense than many generations of actual living persons. The figure of Don Quixote is more tangible to our imagination than all the people who actually were born, went mad, and died, in the days of Don John of Austria.

Not for one moment need it be supposed that the drift of this pleading for an intelligent human piety implies any encouragement to obscurantists and reactionaries.

On the contrary, it is the stupidity of the "broad-minded" that betrays sensitive and imag-

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