Friday, June 7, 2013

And the Wonder Grew

Say if you will that you are a machine, very well you are a machine — a machine that thinks, a machine that plans, a machine that loves, a machine that is not satisfied with itself but goes on inventing all sorts of things and creating all sorts of things.  That thinking, loving, hoping machine is just as wonderful as if you called it a soul.  I do not see that it makes any difference at all what you call it.

A person may say, I believe in God.  Another person may say, I do not believe in God.  That does not make any difference to me as I look out upon the world.  I am not wondering at your definition; I am simply facing a reality which I cannot easily pass by, and after all your denials it is just where it was before, made all the more wonderful by the questionings which have come ...

That is the way religious people in all ages, just because they were religious, have felt, not about what they were told, but about what they experienced in their own lives, in the things they saw, in their sorrows, in their distresses, in their hopes.  They saw something that made them wonder; and the wonder grew ...

— Samuel McChord Crothers (born June 7, 1857)

Samuel McChord Crothers (1857-1927)