"What you say of the connection between physical health and mental serenity and distress in giving up the hereditary faith, and finding one's-self [sic] incapable of forming any rational theory of the universe and of one's own relation to it, is undoubtedly true. But the mass of men, even of those called civilized and intelligent, really take little heed of these things, living by the day, and content to live without other faith than that the course of things, so far as they are concerned, will not undergo any startling change in their time. Natural motives are taking the place of supernatural, -- with considerable damage to the morality of common men, and with a need for a fundamental revision of ethical theories, and legal systems."
-- Letter of 29 July, 1904 of Charles Eliot Norton to William Roscoe Thayer, in Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, vol. II, 1913, p. 346-347.
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