the solution of the riddle of the universe, the riddle of ourselves and of our lives. Idle, that is, if we look—in this life—for an answer which will be clear, full, adequate; excluding all doubts, solving all difficulties. There is no such answer. And yet we are forced, by our very nature as men, to ask the question, to seek, at all events, for some hypothesis. And there is only one hypothesis.
For atheism is not an hypothesis at all. It is not even the "giving up" of the riddle; but rather the confession that there is no riddle. It is as if a man began the study of Greek, and was suddenly convinced that there was no such language as Greek; but merely a vast body of gibberish entirely devoid of meaning or significance; that the Greek Dictionary was an elaborate imposture, and that the tales
