Page:Tolstoy - Demands of Love and Reason.djvu/30

 AND REASON. 27 originate, develop, attain their highest point, and then grow old and disappear, as the Egyptian and Persian religions have done ; she knows that our so-called sacred scriptures did not descend from Heaven, but were written by men and have been subedited and distorted, and cannot, therefore, have an absolute authority; she knows that, as there is no solid sky, Enoch and Elijah and Christ could have had no possible destination when they flew away from the earth in the body, and that if they did fly up they must still be flying on; she knows that all the miracles by which men seek to prove the truth of the ecclesiastical faith are found in all the different religions (birth from a virgin, signs at the nativity, prophecies, wisdom during infancy, cures, resurrection, etc.), that all the invented miracles repeat themselves in all religions, just as the miraculous feats of heroes are repeated in the folk-lore of different races. All this the lady must know, because she has been taught it all, or has read it in books accessible to her, and because all this is known to the gentlemen who frequent her drawing room. Therefore, it is not that she has no right to believe as a peasant woman believes, but that she cannot so believe. She may say she believes thus, but she does not in reality. In order to believe she must have a faith that, like the