Page:Logic Taught by Love.djvu/44

hypotheses. These hypothetical assumptions ought of course to be held lightly; men ought to keep themselves always in readiness to substitute for any one of them any ascertained truth. The tendency, however, of the untutored mind is always towards thinking fancy more sacred than fact, and doubtful episodes more divine than ascertained and eternal laws. An instance of this perversion occurs in the history of the Sabbath. Legislators who had discovered by experience the enormous importance to human welfare of a periodic rest from labour, wishing to enforce its observance, made a fanciful guess at the origin of the need which they perceived. Once upon a time the Creator made visible objects on six of the days of the week, and abstained from doing so on Saturday! Till somebody discovered a more intelligible explanation, it was hoped that this one would impress the Hebrew mind with the idea of keeping Sabbath. The average Hebrew mind fixed itself on the one fragment of fancy lying amid so much solid truth, with the tenacity of a barnacle clinging to a rock; and alas! with something of the short-sightedness of a barnacle, which supposes itself safe because it has got tight hold of a scrap of shell! The Creator left off doing things on a certain Saturday long ago; therefore it is very wicked to do certain things on Saturday. (And indeed it is only too true that some Jews have so completely missed the essence of the Sabbath idea as to consider it wrong to carry an umbrella to Synagogue, but not wrong to sit at home thinking of accounts; wrong to write a letter to an absent friend whom one has not time to correspond with in the week; but quite permissible to "cram" for examinations at any subject which does not involve