of comfort during a life of so little value that the giver can part
with it without regret, is scarcely one to be looked upon as a
mighty benefaction.

"But truth is truth," George would have replied.

What you profess to teach them might be a fact, but could never be a
truth, I answer. And the veiy value which you falsely put upon facts
you have learned to attribute to them from the supposed existence of
something at the root of all facts--namely, TRUTHS, or eternal laws
of being. Still, if you believe that men will be happier from
learning your discovery that there is no God, preach it, and prosper
in proportion to its truth. No; that from my pen would be a
curse--no, preach it not, I say, until you have searched all spaces
of space, up and down, in greatness and smallness--where I grant
indeed, but you cannot know, that you will not find him--and all
regions of thought and feeling, all the unknown mental universe of
possible discovery--preach it not until you have searched that also,
I say, lest what you count a truth should prove to be no fact, and
there should after all be somewhere, somehow, a very, living God, a
Truth indeed, in whom is the universe. If you say, "But I am
convinced there is none," I answer--You may be convinced that there
is no God such as this or that in whom men imagine they believe, but
you cannot be convinced there is no God.

Meantime George did not forget the present of this life in its
future, continued particular about his cigars and his wine, ate his
dinners with what some would call a good conscience and I would call
a dull one, were I sure it was not a good digestion they really
meant, and kept reading hard and to purpose.