The pupils of Secularism should be instructed to observe the benefits of perseverance in the pursuit of minor projects, and encouraged to apply that experience to the higher problems of life. Perseverance should be recognized as the indispensable ally of loftiest genius as well as of the lowliest talent. Failure in secular enterprises should cease to be regarded as a symptom of divine favor; and for those who insist on claiming the protection of supernatural agencies, Goethe’s grand apostrophe to the Genius of Manhood [1] should be condensed in the motto that “Heroic perseverance invokes the aid of the gods.” CHAPTER X. FREETHOUGHT. A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT. The Brahmans have a legend that the first children of man ascended Mount Gunganoor, to visit the castle of Indra and inquire into the secret of their origin. Speculations on the source of life, on the mystery of creation, the cause of good and evil, and similar problems which we might sum up under the name of religious inquiries, seem, indeed, to have occupied the attention of our ancestors at a very early period. An irrepressible instinct appears to prompt the free discussion of such questions, and in a normal state of social relations the attempt to suppress that instinct would have appeared as preposterous as the attempt to enforce silence upon the inquirers into the problems of health or astronomy. A thousand years before the birth of Buddha, the Sakyas, or ethic philosophers, of northern Hindostan visited the mountain-passes of Himalaya to converse with travelers and seek information on the religious customs and traditions of foreign nations. The book of Job, probably the oldest literary product of the Semitic nations, records a series of free and often, indeed, absolutely agnostic discussions of ethical and cosmological problems. “Canst thou by searching find out God?” says Zophar. “It is as high as heaven: what canst thou do? It is deeper than hell: what canst thou know?” “Is it good unto thee that thou shouldst oppress the work of thy own hand?” Job asks his creator; “thine hands have made me; why dost thou destroy me? Thou huntest me like a fierce lion. Wherefore, then, hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh, that I had given up the ghost and no eye had seen me! I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave. Are not my days few? Cease, then, and let me alone, that I may take comfort a little, before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death.”