which
generate purpose.

It must not be supposed that respect for the myth is a discovery of
Sorel's. He is but one of a number of contemporary thinkers who have
reacted against a very stupid prejudice of nineteenth century science to
the effect that the mental habits of human beings were not "facts."
Unless ideas mirrored external nature they were regarded as beneath the
notice of the scientific mind. But in more recent years we have come to
realize that, in a world so full of ignorance and mistake, error itself
is worthy of study. Our untrue ideas are significant because they
influence our lives enormously. They are "facts" to be investigated. One
might point to the great illumination that has resulted from Freud's
analysis of the abracadabra of our dreams. No one can any longer dismiss
the fantasy because it is logically inconsistent, superficially absurd,
or objectively untrue. William James might also be cited for his defense
of those beliefs that are beyond the realm of proof. His essay, "The Will
to Believe," is a declaration of independence, which says in effect that
scientific demonstration is not the only test of ideas. He stated the
case for those beliefs which influence life so deeply, though they fail
to describe it. James himself was very disconcerting to many scientists
because he insisted on expressing his aspirations about the universe in
what his colleague Santayana calls a "romantic cosmology": "I am far from
wishing to suggest that such a view seems to me more probable than
conventional idealism or the Christian Orthodoxy. All three are in the
region of dramatic system-making and myth, to which probabilities are
irrelevant."

It is impossible to leave this point without quoting Nietzsche, who had
this insight and stated it most provocatively. In "Beyond Good and Evil"
Nietzsche says flatly that "the falseness of an opinion is not for us any
objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most
strangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering,
life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing...." Then he
comments on the philosophers. "They all pose as though their real
opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a
cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic...; whereas, in fact, a
prejudiced proposition, idea, or 'suggestion,' which is generally their
heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments
sou