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  ...brief, Dr. Gurgoyle's contention comes to little more than saying that the quick are more dead, and the dead more quick, than we commonly think. To be alive, according to him, is only to be unable to understand how dead one is, and to be dead is only to be invincibly ignorant concerning our own livingness--for the dead would be as living as the living if we could only get them to believe it.

CHAPTER XI: PRESIDENT GURGOYLE'S PAMPHLET "ON THE PHYSICS OF VICARIOUS EXISTENCE"
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.   and this path had led Dr. Gurgoyle to the conviction, real or feigned, that my father was son to the sun, probably by the moon, and that his ascent into the sky with an earthly bride was due to the sun's interference with the laws of nature. Nevertheless he was looked upon as more or less of a survival, and was deemed lukewarm, if not heretical, by those who seemed to be the pillars of the new system.
My father soon found that not even Panky could manipulate his teaching more freely...   Butler, Samuel

Excerpt from Erewhon Revisited · This quote is about belief · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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