be ordered out of court at once, no matter by how clear a logic it
had been arrived at; but what was the alternative? It was this, that our
criterion of truth--i.e. that truth is what commends itself to the great
majority of sensible and successful people--is not infallible. The rule
is sound, and covers by far the greater number of cases, but it has its
exceptions.

He asked himself, what were they? Ah! that was a difficult matter; there
were so many, and the rules which governed them were sometimes so subtle,
that mistakes always had and always would be made; it was just this that
made it impossible to reduce life to an exact science. There was a rough
and ready rule-of-thumb test of truth, and a number of rules as regards
exceptions which could be mastered without much trouble, yet there was a
residue of cases in which decision was difficult--so difficult that a man
had better follow his instinct than attempt to decide them by any process
of reasoning.

Instinct then is the ultimate court of appeal. And what is instinct? It
is a mode of faith in the evidence of things not actually seen. And so
my hero returned almost to the point from which he had started
originally, namely that the just shall live by faith.

And this is what the just--that is to say reasonable people--do as
regards those daily affairs of life which most concern them. They settle
smaller matters by the exercise of their own deliberation. More
important ones, such as the cure of their own bodies and the bodies of
those whom they love, the investment of their money, the extrication of
their affairs from any serious mess--these things they generally entrust
to others of whose capacity they know little save from general report;
they act therefore on the strength of faith, not of knowledge. So the
English nation entrusts the welfare of its fleet and naval defences to a
First Lord of the Admiralty, who, not being a sailor can know nothing
about these matters except by acts of faith. There can be no doubt about
faith and not reason being the _ultima ratio_.

Even Euclid, who has laid himself as little open to the charge of
credulity as any writer who ever lived, cannot get beyond this. He has
no demonstrable first premise. He requires postulates and axioms which
transcend demonstration, and without which he can do nothing. His
superstructure indeed is demonstration, but his ground is faith. Nor
again can he get further than telling a man h