He invokes Buddhism and says
that all souls fade into each other; in order to prove that he
cannot go to heaven he proves that he cannot go to Hartlepool.
I have known people who protested against religious education with
arguments against any education, saying that the child's mind must
grow freely or that the old must not teach the young. I have known
people who showed that there could be no divine judgment by showing
that there can be no human judgment, even for practical purposes.
They burned their own corn to set fire to the church; they smashed
their own tools to smash it; any stick was good enough to beat it with,
though it were the last stick of their own dismembered furniture.
We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this
world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic
who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices
the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God.
He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert
the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne.
He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live,
for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived
at all.
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