Even schoolboys nowadays know that no moral value inheres in any opinion formed upon evidence.

Yet, I dare say it was doubtless for a long period an excellent religion for marauding nations." Or, again, after a long period of apparently rational talk, the unfortunate young man would break out with, "And how childish its wonder-tales were, of iron made to swim, of a rod turned to a serpent, of a coin found in a fish's mouth, of devils asking to go into swine, of a fig-tree cursed to death because it did not bear fruit out of season--how childish that tale of a virgin mother, who conceived 'without sin,' as it is somewhere naively put--an ideal of absolutely flawless falsity.

Even the great old painters were helpless before it.

They were driven to make mindless Madonnas, stupid bits of fleshy animality.

It's not easy to idealise mere physical motherhood.