As I have before said, up to this time, and for years thereafter, I had never read a distinctively "infidel" book, nor even a liberal religious one. My change of opinions had all come from an honest effort to seek proofs for the faith of my fathers, which I inherited. But I never ceased to be a student. My temporary antagonism to the church soon vanished. I simply viewed it with utter indifference, and somewhat of sympathy. I had no more creed to defend, and none to condemn. I had no desire whatever to propagate my own ideas or disturb any one else in theirs. I felt that if any one got any satisfaction out of his religious beliefs he was welcome to it. I would not disturb him for anything. I looked upon it as a harmless delusion, and if it made one any better, society was so much the gainer. But to me it was as "sounding brass and tinkling cymbals." But I cannot say that I was satisfied with my position. Man is a social as well as an emotional animal. Agnosticism is neither social nor emotional. It is cold-blooded and indifferent at its best. It is simply a bundle of doubts and negations. Men are bound together in social and fraternal ties by what they affirm and believe in common. But they care nothing for what they deny. But having no creed to defend and no preconceived opinions to prove, and being of studious habits, I was now prepared to study in search of abstract truth for truth's own sake, ready to accept it from whatever source it might come, and follow it wherever it might lead. Without arrogating to myself any special merit or credit for taking this course, I wish that all people would do the same. As I said in the very beginning of this book, most people inherit their religious beliefs, and there they stop. We are Baptists, or Methodists, or Presbyterians, or Catholics, because we were born so. We transmit our beliefs to our children, from generation to generation, each following the faith of his ancestors, without ever stopping to inquire why, or seek a reason. And if a thought is ever given to it, or any search made, it is but rarely for abstract truth, but for the proofs that support the inherited faith, the preconceived opinion. It is like one going into his house and bolting the door on the inside. Nothing is ever given out and nothing ever permitted to come in. This is exactly why for centuries the world was drenched in Christian blood, shed by Christian hands. Each had its infallible creed, to which all the world must bow--or take the consequences.