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prevent that truth being mutilated.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Very well; but we first tried to prove the truth
itself, and now we are trying to prove the reliability of the guardian
of the truth.
PRIEST. Well here, as a matter of fact, we require faith.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Faith--yes, we need faith. We can't do without
faith. Not, however, faith in what other people tell us, but faith in
what we arrive at ourselves, by our own thought, our own reason ...
faith in God, and in true and everlasting life.
PRIEST. Reason may deceive. Each of us has a different mind.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH [hotly] There, that is the most terrible blasphemy!
God has given us just one sacred tool for finding the truth--the only
thing that can unite us all, and we do not trust it!
PRIEST. How can we trust in it, when there are contradictions?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Where are the contradictions? That twice two are
four; and that one should not do to others what one would not like
oneself; and that everything has a cause? Truths of that kind we all
acknowledge because they accord with all our reason. But that God
appeared on Mount Sinai to Moses, or that Buddha flew up on a sunbeam,
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