men to have made this strange blunder, it only shows that the 'moral
and spiritual' could not be very clearly revealed within; and no
wonder men began to think that perhaps it might come to them
from without! When men begin to mistake blue for red, and square for
round, and chaff for wheat, I think it is high time that they repair
to a doctor outside them to tell them what is the matter with their
poor brains. Meantime an external revelation is impossible?"

"Certainly."

"But men, however, have somehow perversely believed it very possible,
and that, in some shape or other, it has been given?"

"They have, I must admit."

"Unhappy race! thus led on by some fatality, though not by the
constitution of their nature (rather by some inevitable perversion
of it), to believe as possible that which is so plainly impossible.
O that it did not involve a contradiction to wish that God would
relieve them from such universal and pernicious delusions, by giving
them a book-revelation to show them that all book-revelations are
impossible!"

"That," said Fellowes, laughing, "would indeed be a novelty. Miracles
would hardly prove that."

"I think not," said Harrington. "But, as the poet says, 'some god or
friendly man' may show the way. Pray, permit me to ask, did you
always believe that a book-revelation was impossible?"