But those who
would therefore argue that they were not intended for the benefit of the
soul, and seek some more recondite meaning in them as "unconscious
emblems of struggling faith or expressions of inward emotions,"[242-1]
are led astray by the very simplicity of their real intention. Where is
the faith, where the science, that does not involve logical
contradictions just as gross as these? They are tolerable to us merely
because we are used to them. What value has the evidence of the senses
anywhere against a religious faith? None whatever. A stumbling block
though this be to the materialist, it is the universal truth, and as
such it is well to accept it as an experimental fact.
The preconceived opinions that saw in the meteorological myths of the
Indian, a conflict between the Spirit of Good and the Spirit of Evil,
have with like unconscious error falsified his doctrine of a future
life, and almost without an exception drawn it more or less in the
likeness of the Christian heaven, hell, and purgatory.
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