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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
the most part, reject, and instead of it, I open and lay out a new and certain path for the mind to proceed in, starting directly from the simple sensuous perceptions."
With all his brilliance, Baccon, however, felt his unexplored way with caution and prudence. He avoided a frontal attack upon the established crecds and institutions of religion, while dexterously shaking its very foundation. He adopted a clever stratagem. He did not deny the existence of God or the immortality of the soul, but pleaded that these basic questions of faith should be answered by philosophy instead of by thcology; that is to say, by reason instead of by dogma. Once God and soul are placed under the stepmotherly care of philosophy, nothing but dire misfortune can overtake these venerable prejudices. You can just as well take a fish out of water and let it thrive on the high and dry land. Disguised as an humble faithful, the infidel threw down the fateful gauntlet to Faith together with her shady entourage of teleology, theology and metaphysics which had for ages served as so many fetters for the spirit of man. The war thus declared over three hundred years ago, is still being waged. Science has scored splendid victories; but she had to fight cvery inch of the ground. With desperate tenacity prejudice had resisted its advancing opponent; and the final victory of science is still to be won.
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