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1072
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
dence, since that can only go to retard his own spiritual progress which he must be presumed to be anxious not to mar in any possible way. It is simply absurd to impute fraud and forgery to men whose lives of piety and renunciation are models for our own, and who have never been excelled in righteousness.
Moreover, the ancients whose wonderful insight into the nature of things has thrown the lisping 'wisdom’ of the moderns into shade, must be presumed to know that they could not hope to dupe the whole of mankind into false beliefs for ever. They must, therefore, be fixed with the knowledge that the moment the fraud was discovered their whole teaching was liable to be discarded as the word of swindlers and rogues. We refuse to believe that they would incur this risk for no purpose. Besides, it is the nature of man to claim credit for a new discovery; hence, where we find not one's own, but another's claim advanced, the case assumes an aspect of sincerity which no amount of highHown rhetoric can displace. The study of human nature is as necessary for a historian as it is for a philosopher, and so long as our historians ignore that element, they can never hope to command the respect of philosophy, however much they might applaud one another.
The question of antiquity, it may be pointed out further, is of little or no importance with reference to truth, because scientific facts are not valued by the number of centuries that may have elapsed since their discovery. It does not, similarly, matter whether religion be the most ancient system or only of recent growth ; if it is true and helpful, its utility will ever remain unimpaired
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