ONE: TWO:Such arguments manifestly tell not only against Platonism, but against every kind of transcendental realism, from the natural theology of Paley to the dogmatic agnosticism of Mr. Herbert Spencer. A modern Aristotle might say that the hypothesis of a creative first cause, personal or otherwise, logically involves the assumption of as many original specific energies as there are qualities to be accounted for, and thus gives us the unnecessary trouble of counting everything twice over; that every difficulty and contradiction from which the transcendental assumption is intended to free us, must, on analysis, reappear in the assumption itself��for example, the God who is to deliver us from evil must be himself conceived as the creator of evil; that the infinite and absolute can neither cause, nor be apprehended by, the finite and relative; that to separate from Nature all the forces required for its perpetuation, and relegate them to a sphere apart, is a false antithesis and a sterile abstraction; lastly, that causation, whether efficient or final, once begun, cannot stop; that if this world is not self-existing, nothing is; that the mutual adaptation of thoughts in a designing intelligence requires to be accounted for just like any other adaptation; that if the relative involves the absolute, so also does the relation between the two involve another absolute, and so on to infinity.We must add, that while Epicurus was right in regarding the beliefs entertained about a future life as a source of painful anxiety, he was only justified in this opinion by the deeper truth, which he ignored, that they are simply the natural dread of death under another form.178 The most appalling pictures of damnation would, taken by themselves, probably add but little to human misery. The alarming effect even of earthly punishments is found to depend on their certainty much more93 than on their severity; and the certainty of suffering what nobody has ever experienced must be small indeed. Besides, the class most interested in enlarging on the dark side of immortality are also interested in showing that its dangers may be bought off at a comparatively trifling cost. What Epicurus said about the inexorable fate of the physicists might here be turned against himself. He removed terrors which there was a possibility of exorcising, and substituted a prospect of annihilation whence there was no escape.179THREE:"Not at all! If you step outside, you can see them standing, ten minutes from here. Near Lixhe they threw a bridge across the Meuse. It is the third already which they put down, for each time they are smashed from the fort. Oh, it is horrible; there must surely fall a number of dead, and here we have seen corpses in the Meuse already.... But I do not understand how you ventured to come here...."