The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1881-10-30
THE TYRANNY OF INTOLERANCE NOT
THE ANTIDOTE FOR THE FOLLY
OF INFlDELITY.

ntidel works, ana prOpOunulng series oil
interrogatories to us, evidently not in
tended so much to be replied to as to dis
parage us before certain class of readers.
The HERALD never takes position at
hap-hazard and without the reserve
| ammunition to protect its advance
guard on the battlefield of argument. In
the play Of Widow Bedot, there is most
commonplace expression but replete with
food for reflection where the old man re-
marks I'VE are all poor critters' and
Puck" llannts at its masthead a similar
idea in the quotation "What fools these
mortals be-" True, true, with all our
boosted powers, all our learning, all the ac-
cumulated experience from past ages, the
temples wherein lie the works Of centuries,
rarely dare we be positive of anything
And hence how foolish are those reck-
less structures of wild fanatiCiSm
that deludes itself into the belief
that itself alone is the embodiment
Of the perfect7 Doubtless it is true that
on visionary hopes and dogmatic asser-
tions rational criticisms have Il depressing
influence. AS illustrative of this weakness
let us, on this Sunday morning, put some
problems to our correspondent, and reflect
upon them ourselves. And as Conscience
and Perception" be the burden Of his song,
let us ask what is conscience? What is the
worldg How is il governed? BY continuous
divine intervention, or by the operation Of
primordal and interchangeable law? Is.thc
mind of man a "tabla rasa" with no innate
ideas or laws of thought, exclusively de-
irving all its knowledge through its rectiv-
ing agents, the senses, which act as various
avenues to convey as it were a series of tel
egraphic dispatches along those curious and
slender iilaments that compose the nervous
organization by means of which
alone the soul, keeping her hidden
seat and chamber within may
receive communication from the distant
provinces of her empire? Or does it come
upon this globe with already created though
undeveloped ideas, with all the powers of a
complicated machine requiring only the
propulsive force to set them into action {?
Take the single case of perception. Have
we direct cognlzance of real, external
| world? Or does the mind through con-
seriousness know only its own IDEAS know
only itself and its own states? Is
there any such thing as an
external reality, or are our
notions of external things purely subject
i've, havingn no corresponding tangible coun,
terpart Indeed, what is consciousness? Is
it q distict mental faculty, or is it merely an
inseparable concomitant of the mcntll az
tiyities, psychologically and ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Can we rccallwhen it commenced? Can we
examine 1t at any particular moment it cx-
iSts2 Alas, we perceive that both threads OF
it are beyond our grasp, and we are brought
face to face with the unkAowablc, and
forced to recognize at once the grcatnrs,
> and the littloncss of human intellect
We must concedc that behind the veil there
Isle an impenetrable mystery. Even in the
question of the perception of right and
> wrong; whence s il derived, and what /,
that which in any given action imposes upor
us the obligation TO do something? /, il
utility, or is it law, or is il from the immu-
table nature OF things? Is thing
right because it produces happiness;
or does it promote happiness because it i.
right? These are only few of the number
less questions that we might PROFOUND thi.
morning, and on which treatses and book,
innumerable have been written and pnb
llshed by some of the master intellects o
the world, by some of the protoundcst phi
losophcrs, ablest reasoners and most ear
nest ofmen, and yet they are to-day hut
t little farther advanced in the way dissolution
than they were in the days of the lonians
the Eleatics, the SophiSts the Stoics or the
; EpiCureans. AnaXimandcr and Thales
Plato, and Aristotle, Protagoras and Zcno
seem to have been Ogitated by the sam,
questions which our more modern Des
cartes was believed to have solved unit
Malbranche and Berkeley, reasoning from
his premises, established logical,
and irretragahly, the school o
pure idealism and Locke and Hume drirtet
into materialism, the former denying IN,
, reality of anything. external to the mint
, itself and that such supposed mental exist
{ ences were merely notifications of III,
mind, the pure pigments of dream as il
sleep the lattercontending that iftherc is II,
occult substratum called matter as the basi
| of.qualities that strike our sense, and tina
. all we know are simply our ideas them
o selves, what evidence have we that there i
such thing as an occult substratum callc,
| mind2 If so, then thinking and fcelin,
1 must be as completely the province nm,
4 the product Of the brain cells, as that a
: food digestion is of the stomach. pbilo
, s)phy stood aghast at the dilemma, as wei
she might And yet 1t was the lopicu
sequence of the admission of one Of IN
A propositions laid in our series of oues
|. lions above suggested. Again, in this con
: nection and under the same head once more
a I Ike that question Of conso ence tho mo.
/ ccpton of right and wrong. Are the QUO.
V tions of the rightness or the wronpncss d
d an act upon which it pronounces decsio
!, determined by ideas natural, or ar,iGcia
v and acquiredY 1.-THE latter, are thew IN
|. result of education or Of legal restraint2
}, the former, are they to bc referred to III
d scnsibilitieS as the result of special sens,