ENQ. Thus it is on _knowledge_, not on _faith_, that you assert that the permanent principle, the Spirit, simply makes a transit through matter?
THEO. I would put it otherwise and say—we assert that the appearance of the permanent and one principle, Spirit, _as matter_ is transient, and, therefore, no better than an illusion.
ENQ. Very well; and this, given out on knowledge not faith?
THEO. Just so. But as I see very well what you are driving at, I may just as well tell you that we hold _faith_, such as you advocate, to be a mental disease, and real faith, _i.e._, the _pistis_ of the Greeks, as “_belief based on knowledge_,” whether supplied by the evidence of physical or _spiritual_ senses.
THEO. I mean, if it is the difference between the two that you want to know, then I can tell you that between _faith on authority_ and _faith on one’s spiritual intuition_, there is a very great difference.
THEO. One is human credulity and _superstition_, the other human belief and _intuition_. As Professor Alexander Wilder says in his “Introduction to the _Eleusinian Mysteries_,” “It is ignorance which leads to profanation. Men ridicule what they do not properly understand.... The undercurrent of this world is set towards one goal; and inside of human credulity ... is a power almost infinite, a holy faith capable of apprehending the supremest truths of all existence.” Those who limit that “credulity” to human authoritative dogmas alone, will never fathom that power nor even perceive it in their natures. It is stuck fast to the external plane and is unable to bring forth into play the essence that rules it; for to do this they have to claim their right of private judgment, and this they never _dare_ to do.
ENQ. And is it that “intuition” which forces you to reject God as a personal Father, Ruler and Governor of the Universe?
THEO. Precisely. We believe in an ever unknowable Principle, because blind aberration alone can make one maintain that the Universe, thinking man, and all the marvels contained even in the world of matter, could have grown without some _intelligent powers_ to bring about the extraordinarily wise arrangement of all its parts. Nature may err, and often does, in its details and the external manifestations of its materials, never in its inner causes and results. Ancient pagans held on this question far more philosophical views than modern philosophers, whether Agnostics, Materialists or Christians; and no pagan writer has ever yet advanced the proposition that cruelty and mercy are not finite feelings, and can therefore be made the attributes of an _infinite_ god. Their gods, therefore, were all finite. The Siamese author of the _Wheel of the Law_, expresses the same idea about your personal god as we do; he says (p. 25):