X.

In truths dependent on our personal action, then, faith based on desire

is certainly a lawful and possibly an indispensable thing.

But now, it will be said, these are all childish human cases, and have

nothing to do with great cosmical matters, like the question of

religious faith. Let us then pass on to that. Religions differ so

much in their accidents that in discussing the religious question we

must make it very generic and broad. What then do we now mean by the

religious hypothesis? Science says things are; morality says some

things are better than other things; and religion says essentially two

things.

First, she says that the best things are the more eternal things, the

overlapping things, the things in the universe that throw the last

stone, so to speak, and say the final word. "Perfection is

eternal,"--this phrase of Charles Secrétan seems a good way of putting

this first affirmation of religion, an affirmation which obviously

cannot yet be verified scientifically at all.

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The second affirmation of religion is that we are better off even now

if we believe her first affirmation to be true.

Now, let us consider what the logical elements of this situation are

_in case the religious hypothesis in both its branches be really true_.

(Of course, we must admit that possibility at the outset. If we are to

discuss the question at all, it must involve a living option. If for

any of you religion be a hypothesis that cannot, by any living

possibility be true, then you need go no farther. I speak to the

'saving remnant' alone.) So proceeding, we see, first, that religion

offers itself as a _momentous_ option. We are supposed to gain, even

now, by our belief, and to lose by our non-belief, a certain vital

good. Secondly, religion is a _forced_ option, so far as that good

goes. We cannot escape the issue by remaining sceptical and waiting

for more light, because, although we do avoid error in that way _if

religion be untrue_, we lose the good, _if it be true_, just as

certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve. It is as if a man

should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him

because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after

he brought her home. Would he not cut himself off from that particular

angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married some one

else? Scepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option of a

certain particular kind of risk. _Better risk loss of truth than

chance of error_,--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is

actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing

the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is

backing the religious hypothesis against the field. To preach

scepticism to us as a duty until {27} 'sufficient evidence' for

religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in

presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its

being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may

be true. It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only

intellect with one passion laying down its law. And by what, forsooth,

is the supreme wisdom of this passion warranted? Dupery for dupery,

what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than

dupery through fear? I, for one, can see no proof; and I simply refuse

obedience to the scientist's command to imitate his kind of option, in

a case where my own stake is important enough to give me the right to

choose my own form of risk. If religion be true and the evidence for

it be still insufficient, I do not wish, by putting your extinguisher

upon my nature (which feels to me as if it had after all some business

in this matter), to forfeit my sole chance in life of getting upon the

winning side,--that chance depending, of course, on my willingness to

run the risk of acting as if my passional need of taking the world

religiously might be prophetic and right.

All this is on the supposition that it really may be prophetic and

right, and that, even to us who are discussing the matter, religion is

a live hypothesis which may be true. Now, to most of us religion comes

in a still further way that makes a veto on our active faith even more

illogical. The more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is

represented in our religions as having personal form. The universe is

no longer a mere _It_ to us, but a _Thou_, if we are religious; and any

relation that may be possible from person to person might be possible

{28} here. For instance, although in one sense we are passive portions

of the universe, in another we show a curious autonomy, as if we were

small active centres on our own account. We feel, too, as if the

appeal of religion to us were made to our own active good-will, as if

evidence might be forever withheld from us unless we met the hypothesis

half-way. To take a trivial illustration: just as a man who in a

company of gentlemen made no advances, asked a warrant for every

concession, and believed no one's word without proof, would cut himself

off by such churlishness from all the social rewards that a more

trusting spirit would earn,--so here, one who should shut himself up in

snarling logicality and try to make the gods extort his recognition

willy-nilly, or not get it at all, might cut himself off forever from

his only opportunity of making the gods' acquaintance. This feeling,

forced on us we know not whence, that by obstinately believing that

there are gods (although not to do so would be so easy both for our

logic and our life) we are doing the universe the deepest service we

can, seems part of the living essence of the religious hypothesis. If

the hypothesis _were_ true in all its parts, including this one, then

pure intellectualism, with its veto on our making willing advances,

would be an absurdity; and some participation of our sympathetic nature

would be logically required. I, therefore, for one cannot see my way

to accepting the agnostic rules for truth-seeking, or wilfully agree to

keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot do so for this plain

reason, that _a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from

acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were

really there, would be an irrational rule_. That for me {29} is the

long and short of the formal logic of the situation, no matter what the

kinds of truth might materially be.

I confess I do not see how this logic can be escaped. But sad

experience makes me fear that some of you may still shrink from

radically saying with me, _in abstracto_, that we have the right to

believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our

will. I suspect, however, that if this is so, it is because you have

got away from the abstract logical point of view altogether, and are

thinking (perhaps without realizing it) of some particular religious

hypothesis which for you is dead. The freedom to 'believe what we

will' you apply to the case of some patent superstition; and the faith

you think of is the faith defined by the schoolboy when he said, "Faith

is when you believe something that you know ain't true." I can only

repeat that this is misapprehension. _In concreto_, the freedom to

believe can only cover living options which the intellect of the

individual cannot by itself resolve; and living options never seem

absurdities to him who has them to consider. When I look at the

religious question as it really puts itself to concrete men, and when I

think of all the possibilities which both practically and theoretically

it involves, then this command that we shall put a stopper on our

heart, instincts, and courage, and wait--acting of course meanwhile

more or less as if religion were _not_ true[4]--till {30} doomsday, or

till such time as our intellect and senses working together may have

raked in evidence enough,--this command, I say, seems to me the

queerest idol ever manufactured in the philosophic cave. Were we

scholastic absolutists, there might be more excuse. If we had an

infallible intellect with its objective certitudes, we might feel

ourselves disloyal to such a perfect organ of knowledge in not trusting

to it exclusively, in not waiting for its releasing word. But if we

are empiricists, if we believe that no bell in us tolls to let us know

for certain when truth is in our grasp, then it seems a piece of idle

fantasticality to preach so solemnly our duty of waiting for the bell.

Indeed we _may_ wait if we will,--I hope you do not think that I am

denying that,--but if we do so, we do so at our peril as much as if we

believed. In either case we _act_, taking our life in our hands. No

one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words

of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to

respect one another's mental freedom: then only shall we bring about

the intellectual republic; then only shall we have that spirit of inner

tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is soulless, and which

is empiricism's glory; then only shall we live and let live, in

speculative as well as in practical things.

I began by a reference to Fitz James Stephen; let me end by a quotation

from him. "What do you think {31} of yourself? What do you think of

the world?... These are questions with which all must deal as it seems

good to them. They are riddles of the Sphinx, and in some way or other

we must deal with them.... In all important transactions of life we

have to take a leap in the dark.... If we decide to leave the riddles

unanswered, that is a choice; if we waver in our answer, that, too, is

a choice: but whatever choice we make, we make it at our peril. If a

man chooses to turn his back altogether on God and the future, no one

can prevent him; no one can show beyond reasonable doubt that he is

mistaken. If a man thinks otherwise and acts as he thinks, I do not

see that any one can prove that _he_ is mistaken. Each must act as he

thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for him. We stand

on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist,

through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be

deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take

the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know

whether there is any right one. What must we do? 'Be strong and of a

good courage.' Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what

comes.... If death ends all, we cannot meet death better."[5]

[1] An Address to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown

Universities. Published in the New World, June, 1896.

[2] Compare the admirable page 310 in S. H. Hodgson's "Time and Space,"

London, 1865.

[3] Compare Wilfrid Ward's Essay, "The Wish to Believe," in his

_Witnesses to the Unseen_, Macmillan & Co., 1893.

[4] Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe

religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if

we did believe it to be true. The whole defence of religious faith

hinges upon action. If the action required or inspired by the

religious hypothesis is in no way different from that dictated by the

naturalistic hypothesis, then religious faith is a pure superfluity,

better pruned away, and controversy about its legitimacy is a piece of

idle trifling, unworthy of serious minds. I myself believe, of course,

that the religious hypothesis gives to the world an expression which

specifically determines our reactions, and makes them in a large part

unlike what they might be on a purely naturalistic scheme of belief.

[5] Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 353, 2d edition. London, 1874.

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