It is Baur's great merit to have seen that the key to the problem of Christianity lies in the Epistle to the Galatians. No doubt he and his followers rather overdid the thing, but that is always the way with those who take up a new idea. CCCLV If a man cannot do brain work without stimulants of any kind, he had better turn to hand work--it is an indication on Nature's part that she did not mean him to be a head worker. CCCLVI It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts. CCCLVII Even the best of modern civilisations appears to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express my opinion that, if there is no hope of a large improvement of the condition of the greater part of the human family; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning of a greater dominion over Nature which is its consequence, and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and the intensity of Want, with its concomitant physical and moral degradation, among the masses of the people, I should hail the advent of some kindly comet, which would sweep the whole affair away, as a desirable consummation. What profits it to the human Prometheus that he has stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, and that the spirits of the earth and of the air obey him, if the vulture of pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals and keep him on the brink of destruction? CCCLVIII No induction, however broad its basis, can confer certainty--in the strict sense of the word. The experience of the whole human race through innumerable years has shown that stones unsupported fall to the ground, but that does not make it certain that any day next week unsupported stones will not move the other way. All that it does justify is the very strong expectation, which hitherto has been invariably verified, that they will do just the contrary. Only one absolute certainty is possible to man--namely, that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists. All other so-called certainties are beliefs of greater or less intensity. CCCLIX Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture--and very much to our credit. CCCLX There is nothing of permanent value (putting aside a few human affections), nothing that satisfies quiet reflection--except the sense of having worked according to one's capacity and light, to make things clear and get rid of cant and shams of all sorts. That was the lesson I learned from Carlyle's books when I was a boy, and it has stuck by me all my life. You may make more of failing to get money, and of succeeding in getting abuse--until such time in your life (if you are teachable) you have ceased to care much about either. CCCLXI