Yet Perhaps No Sacrifice Is

Hence The Strong Attraction Which Magic And Science Alike Have Exercised On The Human Mind; Hence The Powerful Stimulus That Both Have Given To The Pursuit Of Knowledge. They Lure The Weary Enquirer, The Footsore Seeker, On Through The Wilderness Of Disappointment In The Present By Their Endless Promises Of The Future: They Take Him Up To The Top Of An Exceeding High Mountain And Show Him, Beyond The Dark Clouds And Rolling Mists At His Feet, A Vision Of The Celestial City, Far Off, It May Be, But Radiant With Unearthly Splendour, Bathed In The Light Of Dreams.

From The Earliest Times Man Has Been Engaged In A Search For General Rules Whereby To Turn The Order Of Natural Phenomena To His Own Advantage, And In The Long Search He Has Scraped Together A Great Hoard Of Such Maxims, Some Of Them Golden And Some Of Them Mere Dross. The True Or Golden Rules Constitute The Body Of Applied Science Which We Call The Arts; The False Are Magic.

For When A Nation Becomes Civilized, If It Does Not Drop Human Sacrifices Altogether, It At Least Selects As Victims Only Such Wretches As Would Be Put To Death At Any Rate. Thus The Killing Of A God May Sometimes Come To Be Confounded With The Execution Of A Criminal.

The Athenians Regularly Maintained A Number Of Degraded And Useless Beings At The Public Expense; And When Any Calamity, Such As Plague, Drought, Or Famine, Befell The City, They Sacrificed Two Of These Outcast Scapegoats.

The Question Whether Our Conscious Personality Survives After Death Has Been Answered By Almost All Races Of Men In The Affirmative.