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Updated: June 10, 2025
This view is evidently widely disseminated and has found very abundant support, at least in the letters addressed to me. “The mind,” so wrote the Horseherd, “is not a prius, it is a development, a self-evolving phenomenon.” Everything is now development, and there is no better salve for all ills than development.
The Horseherd is wrong when he denies the existence of things beyond our power of conception. There are, as can be proved, tones that we do not hear, and rays that we cannot see. There are many things that we shall learn to comprehend in the hundreds of thousands of years that are in store for mankind. We are merely in the beginning of our development. Something, however, will always remain over.
It was the sincere tone of the Horseherd that prompted me to public discussion of his doubts, for doubts are generally anticipations of truth, and to be true to oneself is better than to possess all truth. It gave me pleasure to learn recently that he is still among the living, although for an interval he was beyond the range of the usual postal facilities, so that my letters did not reach him.
Because there are natural boundaries that are apparently easy to pass, and yet impassable. The tree grows up a tree, the animal an animal, but no farther, just as man never surpasses the human, and therefore can never think except through language, which often is very imperfect. In one sense, therefore, the Horseherd is quite right.
There is little hope of reaching a mutual understanding when the first attack is characterised by such vigour as was shown by the Horseherd and many of his comrades. He speaks at once of tales of fraud and deceit, and of the fantasies of the Christian religion.
Often it has been very difficult for them to break with their old faith, cherished from childhood, and they can only look upon it as cowardice and weakness if others, as they think, have not made or wished to make this sacrifice. But we shall let the horseherd who emigrated to America speak for himself. I here print his letter exactly as I received it, without any alterations.
These critical investigations concerning the manuscripts of the New Testament, Codex Sinaiticus, Alexandrimus, and Vaticanus, down to Number 269, Bentley’s Q, are probably of less interest to the Horseherd; they are known to those who make a special study of this subject, and are of no interest outside.
Mind is a function of living organisms, which belongs also to a goose and a chicken.” In the Horseherd such language was excusable, but for philosophers to talk in the same style is strange, to say the least.
But the profound peace that lies in this view is as precious to those who have acquired it as is the hope of heaven to the believer. In honest doubt, too, lies a saving power as well as in faith; and your Horseherd is on the path of this salvation. With great respect, Yours very faithfully, Ignotus Agnosticus.
It has been pointed out to me that in one place I did my Horseherd an injustice. I wrote: “You are of opinion that to love God and your neighbour is equivalent to being good, and are evidently very proud of your discovery that there is no distinction between good and evil.
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