Note 56 — Chapter XVI
Reading edition
The following short passage from this debate may serve as an example of the incisive eloquence of which my father was capable at the age of eight-and-twenty:—
"Men say, 'I believe.' Believe in what? 'I believe' is the prostration of the intellect before the unknown—not an exertion of the intellect to grasp the knowable. Men who have taught in Sunday Schools, and children who have been taught there, men worshipping in our churches—men following men in this way have their ideas made for them, fitted on to them like their clothes; and, like the parrot in its gilded cage, they say 'I believe,' because they have been taught to say it, and not because they have a vital faith when they do say it."