They may well give themselves
leave to speculate, for they are secure of a return. Once admitted to
the heaven of thought, they see no relapse into night, but infinite
invitation on the other side. Heaven is within heaven, and sky over
sky, and they are encompassed with divinities. Others there are, to
whom the heaven is brass, and it shuts down to the surface of the
earth. It is a question of temperament, or of more or less immersion
in nature. The last class must needs have a reflex or parasite faith;
not a sight of realities, but an instinctive reliance on the seers and
believers of realities. The manners and thoughts of believers astonish
them, and convince them that these have seen something which is hid
from themselves. But their sensual habit would fix the believer to his
last position, whilst he as inevitably advances; and presently the
unbeliever, for love of belief, burns the believer.
Great believers are always reckoned infidels, impracticable, fantastic,
atheistic, and really men of no account. The spiritualist finds himself
driven to express his faith by a series of skepticisms.
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