REASON AND RELIGION 157
his reason man can know nothing. People say : ' Recog- nise hy inspiration, hy faith ^: but the fact is_, that man cannot even believe apart from his reason. If a man believes one thing and not another_, he does this only because his reason tells him he should not believe this, but should believe that. To say a man should not be guided by reason, is the same as to say to a man carry- ing a lamp in a dark catacomb, that, to find the way out, he must extinguish his lamp and be guided, not by light, but by something else.
But perhaps it will be said (as you say in your letter) that not all men are gifted with great intellect, and especially not with capacity to express their thoughts ; and by an unskilful expression of their thoughts about religion they may, therefore, occasion error. To that I will reply in the words of the Gospel, that what is hidden from the wise is revealed to babes. And this saying is not an exaggeration or a paradox (as we are accustomed to consider sayings in the Gospels that do not please us), but is a statement of the simplest and most undoubted truth, namely, that to every being in the world a law is given which that being should follow, and that to enable him to perceive this law, every being has received suitable organs. And, therefore, every man is gifted with reason, and by that reason the law he should follow is revealed to each man. That law is hidden only from those Avho do not wish to follow it, and who, in order not to obey the law, reject reason, and, instead of using the reason given to them where- with to discern truth, accept on faith the guidance of others who have also rejected reason.
The law man should follow is so simple that it is accessible to every child : especially as man need not rediscover this law of his life. Those who lived before us discovered and exjjressed it, and a man need only verify the proj)Ositions he finds expressed in tradition, by his own reason — accepting or rejecting them. But he must not do as people advise who prefer not to obey the law : he must not check his reason by tradition, but, contrariwise, must check tradition by reason.
