On Truth and Abortion, by Regis Martin

Of all the needs that drive the engine of the soul, there is none more pressing than the need to know and to love the truth. It is as necessary to the maintenance of the soul as food is to the body or oxygen to the lungs. Without truth, and the human hunger for it, the soul shrivels up and dies.

This applies even to those who persist in telling us that there is no soul, a refusal that, until quite recently, was widely regarded as a species of insanity. Rather like the refusal to eat or drink, followed by repeated insistence that one is perfectly healthy. If the soul stands wide open before the world, then it would be unnatural not to take it in, seizing upon it in all its wonder and detail. Isn’t this what distinguishes us from the other primates, this openness, this passion, this unquenchable thirst for truth? “All human beings,” says Aristotle, “desire to know.” And that which they desire above all else to know, is truth. Not falsehood or folly, but truth and the wisdom it brings. ….