It
would be better to say that truth forms a part of happiness in a
Tertullianesque sense, in the sense of _credo quia absurdum_, which
means actually _credo quia consolans_--I believe because it is a thing
consoling to me.
No, for reason, truth is that of which it can be proved that it is, that
it exists, whether it console us or not. And reason is certainly not a
consoling faculty. That terrible Latin poet Lucretius, whose apparent
serenity and Epicurean _ataraxia_ conceal so much despair, said that
piety consists in the power to contemplate all things with a serene
soul--_pacata posse mente omnia tueri_. And it was the same Lucretius
who wrote that religion can persuade us into so great evils--_tantum
religio potuit suadere malorum_. And it is true that religion--above all
the Christian religion--has been, as the Apostle says, to the Jews a
stumbling-block, and to the intellectuals foolishness.[29] The Christian
religion, the religion of the immortality of the soul, was called by
Tacitus a pernicious superstition (_exitialis superstitio_), and he
asserted that it involved a hatred of mankind (_odium generis humani_).
Speaking of the age in which these men lived, the most genuinely
rationalistic age in the world's history, Flaubert, writing to Madame
Roger des Genettes, uttered these pregnant words: "You are right; we
must speak with respect of Lucretius; I see no one who can compare with
him except Byron, and Byron has not his gravity nor the sincerity of his
sadness.
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