te experience. And such an assertion is indeed
a self-contradiction.

This, I assert, is the only rational way of stating the nature of
opinion, of truth or error, and consequently of reality. This is the
synthesis which reason inevitably accomplishes whenever it rightly
views the nature and the implications of even our most flickering and
erroneous and uncertain {115} opinions. We can err about what you
will. But if we err, we simply come short of the insight to which we
are aiming to conform, and in the light of which our ideas get
absolutely all of their meaning. In every error, in every blunder, in
all our darkness, in all our ignorance, we are still in touch with the
eternal insight. We are always seeking to know even as we are known.

I have sought in this sketch to vindicate the general rights of
rational insight as against mere momentary or fragmentary intuition. I
have also tried to show you what synthesis of reason gives us a
genuinely religious insight.

"My first penitent," said the priest of our story, "was a murderer."
"And I," said the nobleman, "was this priest's first penitent."

"I am ignorant of the vast and mysterious real world"--thus says our
sense of human fallibility and weakness when we are first awakened to
our need of rational guidance. The saying is true. The mystery is
appalling. "I am ignorant of the real world." Yes; but reason,
reflecting upon the nature and the essential meaning of opinion, of
truth, of error, and of ignorance, points out to us this thesis: "That
of which I am ignorant is that about which I can err. But error is
failure to conform my momentary opinion to the very insight which I
mean and to which I am all the while appealing. Error is failure to
conform to the inclusive insight which {116} overarches my errors with
the heaven of its rational clearness. Error is failure to grasp the
very light which shines in my darkness, even while my darkness
comprehends it not. That of which I am ignorant is then essentially
the object of a super-human and divine insight."

"I am ignorant of the world. To be ignorant is to fail to grasp the
object of the all-inclusive and divine insight." That is the
expression of our situation. Reason easily makes the fitting synthesis
when it considers the priest and the nobleman. I ask you to make the
analogous synthesis regarding the world and the divine insight. This
synthesis here takes form in concluding that the world is the object
of a