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The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske
page 58 of 345 (16%)
past, to possess different values for different minds. He who, on
such considerations, entertains a belief in a future life may not
demand that his sceptical neighbour shall be convinced by the
same considerations; but his neighbour is at the same time
estopped from stigmatizing his belief as unphilosophical.

The consideration which must influence most minds in their
attitude toward this question, is the craving, almost universally
felt, for some teleological solution to the problem of existence.
Why we are here now is a question of even profounder interest
than whether we are to live hereafter. Unfortunately its solution
carries us no less completely beyond the range of experience! The
belief that all things are working together for some good end is
the most essential expression of religious faith: of all
intellectual propositions it is the one most closely related to
that emotional yearning for a higher and better life which is the
sum and substance of religion. Yet all the treatises on natural
theology that have ever been written have barely succeeded in
establishing a low degree of scientific probability for this
belief. In spite of the eight Bridgewater Treatises, and the
"Ninth" beside, dysteleology still holds full half the field as
against teleology. Most of this difficulty, however, results from
the crude anthropomorphic views which theologians have held
concerning God. Once admitting that the Divine attributes may be
(as they must be) incommensurably greater than human attributes,
our faith that all things are working together for good may
remain unimpugned.

To many minds such a faith will seem incompatible with belief in
the ultimate destruction of sentiency amid the general doom of
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