to believe.

May we give this position the dignity of a philosophical doctrine and
hold that, in the somewhat nebulous realm inhabited by the philosopher,
men are not bound by the same rules of evidence that obtain elsewhere?
That this is actually done, those who read much in the field of modern
philosophy are well aware. Several excellent writers have maintained
that we need not, even if there seems to be evidence for them, accept
views of the universe which do not satisfy "our whole nature."

We should not confuse with this position the very different one which
maintains that we have a right to hold tentatively, and with a
willingness to abandon them should evidence against them be
forthcoming, views which we are not able completely to establish, but
which seem reasonable. One may do this with perfect sincerity, and
without holding that philosophical truth is in any way different from
scientific truth. But the other position goes beyond this; it assumes
that man must be satisfied, and that only that can be true which
satisfies him.

I ask, is it not significant that such an assumption should be made
only in the realm of the unverifiable? No man dreams of maintaining
that the rise and fall of stocks will be such as to satisfy the whole
nature even of the elect, or that the future history of man on this
planet is a thing to be determined by some philosopher who decides for
us what would or would not be desirable.

Surely all truths of election--those truths that we simply choose to
have true--are something much less august than that Truth of Evidence
which sometimes seems little to fall in with our desires, and in the
face of which we are humble listeners, not dictators. Before the
latter we are modest; we obey, lest we be confounded. And if, in the
philosophic realm, we believe that we may order Truth about, and make
her our slave, is it not because we have a secret consciousness that we
are not dealing with Truth at all, but with Opinion, and with Opinion
that has grown insolent because she cannot be drawn from her obscurity
and be shown to be what she is?

Sometimes it is suddenly revealed to a man that he has been accepting
two orders of truth. I once walked and talked with a good scholar who
discoursed of high themes and defended warmly certain theses. I said
to him: If you could go into the house opposite, and discover
unmistakably whether you are in the right or in the wrong,--discover it
as unmista