Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/69

 would still have to be adopted. Christ at once accommodated himself to the material on which he had to work, and in this compels the admiration even of atheists themselves. (In what sense I here use the word atheist every discriminating reader will appreciate.) How easy it would have been for such a mind to have thought out a system suited to pure reason and fully satisfactory to all philosophers! But where is the public for it? Centuries perhaps would have passed before it had been understood; and something of the kind had to serve to guide and govern the human race, and to be a stay to them in the hour of death! Nay, what would not the Jesuits of all times and nations have made of such a philosophy? What is to influence mankind must be true, but at the same time intelligible to all ; even if it has to be brought home to them in a figurative way and they interpret it differently at each stage of perception. A long speech may easily be learnt off by heart; a long poem still more easily. How difficult it would be to memorize a set of words of about the same length, but devoid of meaning, or to get a speech off by heart in some foreign language! Sense and meaning, then, are an assistance to memory. Sense is order, and order after all is in the last resort nothing but conformity to our nature. All we do, when we talk sense, is to express ourselves conformably to our nature and being. So if we want to fix anything in our memory we always try to give it a definite sense or order; for instance, genera and species in the case of animals and