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BOOK III.
FAITH.
Terrible Spirit, thy discourse has smitten me to the ground. But thou referrest me to myself, and what were I, could anything out of myself irrecoverably cast me down? I will,—yes, surely I will follow thy counsel.
What seekest thou, then, my complaining heart? What is it that excites thee against a system to which my understanding cannot raise the slightest objection?
This it is:—I demand something beyond a mere presentation or conception; something that is, has been, and will be, even if the presentation were not; and which the presentation only records, without producing it, or in the smallest degree changing it. A mere presentation I now see to be a deceptive show; my presentations must have a meaning beneath them, and if my entire knowledge revealed to me nothing but knowledge, I would be defrauded of my whole life. That there is nothing whatever but my presentations or conceptions, is, to the natural sense of mankind, a silly and ridiculous conceit which no man can seriously entertain, and which requires no refutation. To the better-informed judgment, which knows the deep, and, by mere reasoning, irrefragable grounds for this assertion, it is a prostrating, annihilating thought.
