The Life of Reason Or the Phases of Human Progress (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Life of Reason or the Phases of Human Progress Experience has repeatedly confirmed that wen known maxim of Bacon's, that a little philoso new phy inclineth man's mind to atheism, certainly but depth in philosophy bringeth men's imam minds about to religion. In every age the most comprehensive thinkers have found in the religion of their time and country something they could accept, interpreting and illustrating that religion so as to give it depth and universal application. Even the heretics and atheists, if they have had profundity, turn out after a while to be forerunners of some new orthodoxy. What they rebel against is a religion alien to their na ture; they are atheists only by accident, and rela tively to a convention which inwardly offends them, but they yearn mightily in their own souls after the religious acceptance of a world interpreted in their own fashion. So it appears in the end that their atheism and loud protestation were in fact the hastier part of their thought, since what embold ened them to deny the poor world's faith was that they were too impatient to understand it. Indeed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.