essor Leuba
designates it, is a good one.[341] It is a biological as well as a
psychological condition, and Tolstoy is absolutely accurate in classing
faith among the forces BY WHICH MEN LIVE.[342] The total absence of
it, anhedonia,[343] means collapse.

[340] Compare, for instance, pages 200, 215, 219, 222, 244-250, 270-273.

[341] American Journal of Psychology, vii. 345.

[342] Above, p. 181.

[343] Above, p. 143.

The faith-state may hold a very minimum of intellectual content. We
saw examples of this in those sudden raptures of the divine presence,
or in such mystical seizures as Dr. Bucke described.[344] It may be a
mere vague enthusiasm, half spiritual, half vital, a courage, and a
feeling that great and wondrous things are in the air.[345]

[344] Above, p. 391.

[345] Example: Henri Perreyve writes to Gratry: "I do not know how to
deal with the happiness which you aroused in me this morning. It
overwhelms me; I want to DO something, yet I can do nothing and am fit
for nothing.... I would fain do GREAT THINGS." Again, after an
inspiring interview, he writes: "I went homewards, intoxicated with
joy, hope, and strength. I wanted to feed upon my happiness in
solitude far from all men. It was late; but, unheeding that, I took a
mountain path and went on like a madman, looking at the heavens,
regardless of earth. Suddenly an instinct made me draw hastily back
--I was on the very edge of a precipice, one step more and I must have
fallen. I took fright and gave up my nocturnal promenade." A. Gratry:
Henri Perreyve, London, 1872, pp. 92, 89.

This primacy, in the faith-state, of vague expansive impulse over
direction is well expressed in Walt Whitman's lines (Leaves of Grass,
1872, p. 190):--

"O to confront night, storms, hunger,ridicule, accidents,
rebuffs, as the trees and animals do....
Dear Camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and
still urge you, without the least idea what is our
destination
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and
defeated."

This readiness for great things, and this sense that the world by its
importance, wonderfulness, etc., is apt for their production, would
seem to be the undifferentiated germ of all the higher faiths. Trust
in our own dreams of ambition, or in our country's expansive destinies,
and faith in the providence of God, all have their source in that
onrush of our sanguine impulses,