cy in every idea to resolve itself into action--an
idea being simply an inchoate or abortive act. It was this notion that
suggested to Fouillee his theory of idea-forces. But ordinarily ideas
are forces which we accommodate to other forces, deeper and much less
conscious.

But putting all this aside for the present, what I wish to establish is
that uncertainty, doubt, perpetual wrestling with the mystery of our
final destiny, mental despair, and the lack of any solid and stable
dogmatic foundation, may be the basis of an ethic.

He who bases or thinks that he bases his conduct--his inward or his
outward conduct, his feeling or his action--upon a dogma or theoretical
principle which he deems incontrovertible, runs the risk of becoming a
fanatic, and moreover, the moment that this dogma is weakened or
shattered, the morality based upon it gives way. If, the earth that he
thought firm begins to rock, he himself trembles at the earthquake, for
we do not all come up to the standard of the ideal Stoic who remains
undaunted among the ruins of a world shattered into atoms. Happily the
stuff that is underneath a man's ideas will save him. For if a man
should tell you that he does not defraud or cuckold his best friend only
because he is afraid of hell, you may depend upon it that neither would
he do so even if he were to cease to believe in hell, but that he would
invent some other excuse instead. And this is all to the honour of the
human race.

But he who believes that he is sailing, perhaps without a set course, on
an unstable and sinkable raft, must not be dismayed if the raft gives
way beneath his feet and threatens to sink. Such a one thinks that he
acts, not because he deems his principle of action to be true, but in
order to make it true, in order to prove its truth, in order to create
his own spiritual world.

My conduct must be the best proof, the moral proof, of my supreme
desire; and if I do not end by convincing myself, within the bounds of
the ultimate and irremediable uncertainty, of the truth of what I hope
for, it is because my conduct is not sufficiently pure. Virtue,
therefore, is not based upon dogma, but dogma upon virtue, and it is not
faith that creates martyrs but martyrs who create faith. There is no
security or repose--so far as security and repose are obtainable in this
life, so essentially insecure and unreposeful--save in conduct that is
passionately good.

Conduct, practice, is the proof of do