"Tradition," Keidansky continued musing aloud, "is far more beautiful than history, and even nature with all her charms has to be improved upon by art, by illusion. In the course of time science may build up some interesting superstitions, but meanwhile it is our poor debtor. It has filled the world with cold facts. It has emptied the heart of its fond fancies. And what do we really know, after all? The greatest philosopher of the age pauses and stands nonplussed before the Unknowable. The densest ignoramus in the world knows it all; knows all about the worlds beneath and beyond--their climates, inhabitants, populations, moral status, tortures and pleasures. What do we know, anyway? Next to nothing, and we feel lonely and desolate and powerless after we have had everything explained to us. Orthodoxy, at least, gives us the consciousness of having some control in the universe; it gives us a sense of shelter and of safety. We know we have a kind of vote in the general management of things. We can accomplish something by our prayers, by fasting. And when the fearful days come, the days in which the destiny of every mortal for the coming year is determined on high, we ask for atonement, and fast and pour out our griefs in mournful prayers and burn candles for the dead. Our voices are heard on high, because we believe they are, and our names are entered in the Book of Life for another year. Do not smile now, nor look so wise. All that is, is well, and whatever we believe in is true. The greatest sacrifice we made to science was our ignorance. "But whether it is this or that, there is something rooted so firmly and so unfathomably deep within us that calls and pulls us back to all that we have deserted and tried to forget; and when these hallowed days come, we can no longer drown our feelings. No matter how far I went in my radical conceptions--and I often went far enough to be excommunicated by my worthy brethren--no matter how iconoclastic we became, how absorbed we were in our abstractions, and how fearlessly we theorized, the season of awe, beautiful, terrible awe, the judgment days drew near and hearts became heavy and the melody of the song of 'Kol Nidro' invaded our minds and shut out all the other music we ever heard in our lives. It is all a strain of music that, once heard, keeps singing in our memories forever--this faith of our fathers. Go where we will, do what we may, the beauties of the old religion are with us yet and we cannot, we cannot forget.