. Our gain will thus in the
first instance be psychological. We shall merely have investigated a
chapter in the natural history of the mind, and found that, as a matter
of such natural history, God may be called the normal object of the
mind's belief. Whether over and above this he be really the living
truth is another question. If he is, it will show the structure of our
mind to be in accordance with the nature of reality. Whether it be or
not in such accordance is, it seems to me, one of those questions that
belong to the province of personal faith to decide. I will not touch
upon the question here, for I prefer to keep to the strictly
natural-history point of view. I will only remind you that each one of
us is entitled either to doubt or to believe in the harmony between his
faculties and the truth; and that, whether he doubt or {117} believe,
he does it alike on his personal responsibility and risk.

"Du musst glauben, du musst wagen,
Denn die Goetter leihn kein Pfand,
Nur ein Wunder kann dich tragen
In das schoene Wunderland."

I will presently define exactly what I mean by God and by Theism, and
explain what theories I referred to when I spoke just now of attempts
to fly beyond the one and to outbid the other.

But, first of all, let me ask you to linger a moment longer over what I
have called the reflex theory of mind, so as to be sure that we
understand it absolutely before going on to consider those of its
consequences of which I am more particularly to speak. I am not quite
sure that its full scope is grasped even by those who have most
zealously promulgated it. I am not sure, for example, that all
physiologists see that it commits them to regarding the mind as an
essentially teleological mechanism. I mean by this that the conceiving
or theorizing faculty--the mind's middle department--functions
_exclusively for the sake of ends_ that do not exist at all in the
world of impressions we receive by way of our senses, but are set by
our emotional and practical subjectivity altogether.[2] It is a
transformer of the world of our impressions into a totally different
world,--the world of our conception; and the transformation is effected
in the interests of our volitional nature, and for no other purpose
whatsoever. Destroy the volitional nature, the definite subjective
purposes, preferences, {118} fondnesses for certain effects, forms,
orders, and not the slightest motive would remain