{"id":"01KG8AN1S4NX5NM7Y91ZBCR6PM","cid":"bafkreiby7suwpl3k43uuv5bjcvj5agjvavomwlp4vphsz3yhm74dh5r6uu","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":9286,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 4","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":9228,"text":"Sooner or later in this life, the earnest, or enthusiastic youth comes\r\nto know, and more or less appreciate this startling solecism:--That\r\nwhile, as the grand condition of acceptance to God, Christianity calls\r\nupon all men to renounce this world; yet by all odds the most Mammonish\r\npart of this world--Europe and America--are owned by none but professed\r\nChristian nations, who glory in the owning, and seem to have some reason\r\ntherefor.\r\n\r\nThis solecism once vividly and practically apparent; then comes the\r\nearnest reperusal of the Gospels: the intense self-absorption into that\r\ngreatest real miracle of all religions, the Sermon on the Mount. From\r\nthat divine mount, to all earnest loving youths, flows an inexhaustible\r\nsoul-melting stream of tenderness and loving-kindness; and they leap\r\nexulting to their feet, to think that the founder of their holy religion\r\ngave utterance to sentences so infinitely sweet and soothing as these\r\nsentences which embody all the love of the Past, and all the love which\r\ncan be imagined in any conceivable Future. Such emotions as that Sermon\r\nraises in the enthusiastic heart; such emotions all youthful hearts\r\nrefuse to ascribe to humanity as their origin. This is of God! cries the\r\nheart, and in that cry ceases all inquisition. Now, with this fresh-read\r\nsermon in his soul, the youth again gazes abroad upon the world.\r\nInstantly, in aggravation of the former solecism, an overpowering sense\r\nof the world's downright positive falsity comes over him; the world\r\nseems to lie saturated and soaking with lies. The sense of this thing is\r\nso overpowering, that at first the youth is apt to refuse the evidence\r\nof his own senses; even as he does that same evidence in the matter of\r\nthe movement of the visible sun in the heavens, which with his own eyes\r\nhe plainly sees to go round the world, but nevertheless on the authority\r\nof other persons,--the Copernican astronomers, whom he never saw--he\r\nbelieves it _not_ to go round the world, but the world round it. Just\r\nso, too, he hears good and wise people sincerely say: This world only\r\n_seems_ to be saturated and soaking with lies; but in reality it does\r\nnot so lie soaking and saturate; along with some lies, there is much\r\ntruth in this world. But again he refers to his Bible, and there he\r\nreads most explicitly, that this world is unconditionally depraved and\r\naccursed; and that at all hazards men must come out of it. But why come\r\nout of it, if it be a True World and not a Lying World? Assuredly, then,\r\nthis world is a lie.\r\n\r\nHereupon then in the soul of the enthusiast youth two armies come to the\r\nshock; and unless he prove recreant, or unless he prove gullible, or\r\nunless he can find the talismanic secret, to reconcile this world with\r\nhis own soul, then there is no peace for him, no slightest truce for him\r\nin this life. Now without doubt this Talismanic Secret has never yet\r\nbeen found; and in the nature of human things it seems as though it\r\nnever can be. Certain philosophers have time and again pretended to have\r\nfound it; but if they do not in the end discover their own delusion,\r\nother people soon discover it for themselves, and so those philosophers\r\nand their vain philosophy are let glide away into practical oblivion.\r\nPlato, and Spinoza, and Goethe, and many more belong to this guild of\r\nself-impostors, with a preposterous rabble of Muggletonian Scots and\r\nYankees, whose vile brogue still the more bestreaks the stripedness of\r\ntheir Greek or German Neoplatonical originals. That profound Silence,\r\nthat only Voice of our God, which I before spoke of; from that divine\r\nthing without a name, those impostor philosophers pretend somehow to\r\nhave got an answer; which is as absurd, as though they should say they\r\nhad got water out of stone; for how can a man get a Voice out of\r\nSilence?\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 4"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJTDYVK8J8YE00DK13XV8","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AN1SB7V9GBVJ2BRB7F21W","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AN1S4SQD8H6WSBZM300FG","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:57.124Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:24.626Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}