There is no other. And unless he really thinks and
really believes, he has no permanent world at all. I grant that few
people think, and still fewer believe, and that most take ready-made
suits and make them do. Only the strong make their own things; the
lesser fry, Mabel among them, are merely swept up into what has been
manufactured for them. They get along somehow. You and I have made for
ourselves, Mabel has not. She is a nonentity, and when her belief is
taken from her, she goes with it."
It was not in me just then to criticize the evasion, or pick out the
sophistry from the truth. I merely waited for her to continue.
"None of us have Truth, my dear Frances," I ventured presently, seeing
that she kept silent.
"Precisely," she answered, "but most of us have beliefs. And what one
believes and thinks affects the world at large. Consider the legacy of
hatred and cruelty involved in the doctrines men have built into their
creeds where the sine qua non of salvation is absolute acceptance of one
particular set of views or else perishing everlastingly--for only by
repudiating history can they disavow it--"
"You're not quite accurate," I put in. "Not all the creeds teach
damnation, do they? Franklyn did, of course, but the others are a bit
modernized now surely?"
"Trying to get out of it," she admitted, "perhaps they are, but
damnation of unbelievers--of most of the world, that is--is their rather
favorite idea if you talk with them.
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