Need the answer we are speaking of be definite and universal?
or can we look forward to its remaining undecided till the end of time?
Now I have already tried to make it evident that for the individual, at any rate, it must by-and-by be definite one way or the other.

The thorough positive thinker will not be able to retain in supreme power principles which have no positive basis.

He cannot go on adoring a hunger which he knows can never be satisfied, or cringing before fears which he knows will never be realised.

And even if this should for a time be possible, his case will be worse, not better.

Conscience, if it still remains with him, will remain not as a living thing--a severe but kindly guide--but as the menacing ghost of the religion he has murdered, and which comes to embitter degradation, not to raise it.