Page:Toleration and other essays.djvu/261

Rh and could not do so; or he was able to do so, and did not wish."

A thousand bachelors and doctors of divinity have fired the arrows of the school at this unshakeable rock; in this terrible shelter have the Atheists taken refuge. Yet the Atheist must admit that there is in nature an active, intelligent, necessary, eternal principle, and that from this principle comes all that we call good and evil. Let us discuss the point with the Atheist.

An Atheist says to me: It has been proved, I admit, that there is an eternal and necessary principle. But from the fact that it is necessary I infer that all that is derived from it is necessary; you have been compelled to admit this yourself. Since everything is necessary, evil is as inevitable as good. The great wheel of the ever-turning machine crushes all that comes in its way. I have no need of an intelligent being who can do nothing of himself, and who is as much a slave to his destiny as I am to mine. If he existed, I should have too much with which to reproach him. I should be obliged to call him either feeble or wicked. I would rather deny his existence than be discourteous to him. Let us get through this miserable life as well as we can without reference to a fantastic being whom no one has ever seen, and to whom it would matter little, if he existed, whether we believed in