Note 76 — Chapter VIII · CONCLUSION

Meanwhile our present course is clearly defined: we should search out and expose all false premises of belief. Only in this way can we hope to arrive a little nearer to the ultimate truth. Also, what is of much greater consequence, when all that is demonstrably untrue in the world’s beliefs has been pointed out and acknowledged, believers and unbelievers will be in far better accord concerning all that is vital to the well-being of the human race. “We cannot,” as Mr. Trevelyan pertinently remarks,76 “alter the nature of the Unknown by conceiving it to be other than that which it is; but we can get a wrong basis for ethics, and a false sentimental outlook on everything, by reason of false beliefs.”