The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays: 1909Bierce, Ambrose
Philosophy
The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays: 1909
Bierce, Ambrose
Essays
The trouble with Mr. Harvey of the "Review" was inability to put himself
in another's place if that happened to be at any considerable distance
from his own place. He made no allowance for the difference in the point
of view--for the difference, that is, between his mind and the mind
of Mr. Sheldon. If Mr. Harvey had undertaken to conduct that Kansas
newspaper as Christ would have done he would indeed have been "a
notoriety seeking mountebank," or some similarly unenviable thing, for
only a selfish purpose could persuade him to an obviously resultless
work. But Mr. Sheldon was different--his was the religious mind--a mind
having faith in an "overruling" Providence who can, and frequently does,
interfere with the orderly relation of cause and effect, accomplishing
an end by means otherwise inadequate to its production. Believing
himself a faithful servant of that Power, and asking daily for its
interposition for promotion of a highly moral purpose, why should he not
have expected his favor to the enterprise? To expect that was, in
Mr. Sheldon, natural, reasonable, wise; his folly lay in believing in
conditions making it expectable. A person convinced that the law of
gravitation is suspended is no fool for walking into a bog. Mr. Harvey
may understand, but Mr. Sheldon can not understand, that Jesus Christ
would not edit a newspaper at all.
The religious mind, it should be understood, is not logical. It may
acquire, as Whateley's did, a certain familiarity with the syllogism as
an abstraction, but of the syllogism's practical application, its
real relation to the phenomena of thought, the religious mind can know
nothing. That is merely to say that the mind congenitally gifted with
the power of logic and accessible to its light and leading does not take
to religion, which is a matter, not of reason, but of feeling--not of
the head, but of the heart. Religions are conclusions for which the
facts of nature supply no major premises. They are accepted or rejected
according to the original mental make-up of the person to whom they
appeal for recognition. Believers and unbelievers are like two boys
quarreling across a wall. Each got to his place by means of a ladder.
They may fight if they will, but neither can kick away the other's
support.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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