Page:Studies of a Biographer 2.djvu/130

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118
STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER

understanding; that, therefore, all the argumentation about 'evidences' and so forth is the application of a totally inappropriate test; and you certainly reach an intelligible position. It is moreover one to which the modern mind, with its growing indifference to the old controversies, its apparently unaltered, if not growing, conviction that some religion is necessary, combined with the conviction that one set of dogmas is about as good as another, may seem to be approximating. The Churches would escape a good many difficulties, and apologists a good deal of trouble, in connecting their premisses with their conclusions, if they could boldly follow Arnold and say that they do not appeal to the reason but to the imagination. Leave out the awkward words 'I believe'; or substitute, 'I feign for purposes of edification,' and all would go right. Unity must be sought, not by the triumph of one set of dogmas, but all equally absolute, but by giving up dogma, or treating it as essentially poetry, and admitting that to take it as a prosaic statement of fact always is and always has been a blunder. It is true that the prosaic person has a difficulty in accepting this position. He will not admit that a religion is good for anything when it abandons its ancient claims to give