Sunday, November 11, 2012

There is this characteristic of the vitality of all real attitudes, that they can be expressed in any number of ways, and are always taking on new disguises. Everything that is really true is true for all the reasons of its opponents, as well as for all the reasons of its supporters. Blasphemy itself is only the underside of holiness; when Swift said, as a bitter joke, that if Christianity were abolished it would be a pity, since nobody could swear, he was expressing what is, in actual truth, one of the strongest arguments for the sanctity and necessity of the supernatural. It is the argument that without it we have no superlatives: that without it no one could say "God bless you" or "God forbid": that the language of lovers would suddenly be bankrupt with the bankruptcy of theology. And when we find this about a view, that it is able to express itself, either religiously or sceptically, either gravely or flippantly, we are certain that it lives

-The English Illustrated Magazine, Volume 29 (1903)

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