course meanwhile more or less as if religion were 
true[5 ] -- till doomsday, or till such time as our
intellect and senses working together may have raked in
evidence enough, -- this command, I say, seems to me the
queerest idol ever manufactured in the philosophic cave.
Were we scholastic absolutists, there might be more excuse.
If we had an infallible intellect with its objective
certitudes, we might feel ourselves disloyal to such a
perfect organ of knowledge in not trusting to it
exclusively, in not waiting for its releasing word. But if
we are empiricists, if we believe that no bell in us tolls
to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp, then
it seems a piece of idle fantasticality to preach so
solemnly our duty of waiting for the bell. Indeed we 
wait if we will, -- I hope you do not think that I am
denying that, -- but if we do so, we do so at our peril as
much as if we believed. In either case we , taking our
life in our hands. No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the
other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the
contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another's
mental freedom: then only shall we bring about the
intellectual republic; then only shall we have that spirit
of inner tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is
soulless, and which is empiricism's glory; then only shall
we live and let live, in speculative as well as in practical
things.

     I began by a reference to Fitz James Stephen; let me
end by a quotation from him. " What do you think of
yourself? What do you think of the world? . . . These are
questions with which all must deal as it seems good to them.
They are riddles of the Sphinx, in some way or other we must
deal with them... In all important transactions of life we
have to a leap in the dark. . . . If we decide to leave the
riddles unanswered, that is a choice; if we waver in our
answer, that, too, is a choice: but whatever choice we make,
we make it at our peril. If a man chooses to turn his back
altogether on God and the future, no one can prevent him; no
one can show beyond reasonable doubt that he is mistaken. If
a man thinks otherwise and acts as he thinks, I do not see
that any one can prove that  is mistaken. Each must act
as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for
him. We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling
snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now
and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still
we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we
shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether
there is any right one. What must we do? "Be strong and of a
good courage." Act for the best, hope for the best, and take
what comes. . . . If death ends all, we cannot meet death
better."[6 ]

     1 [COPYRIGHT: (c) 1996, James Fieser (jfieser@utm.edu),
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     2 An Address to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and
Brown Universities. Published in the New World, June, 1896.3
Compare the admirable page 310 in S. H. Hodpon's " Time and
Space," London, 1865.4 Compare Wilfrid Ward's Essay, "The
Wish to Believe," in his Witnesses to the Unseen, Macmillan
& Co., 1893.
5 Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to
believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to
act as we should if we did believe it to be true. The whole
defense of religious faith hinges upon action. If the action
required or inspired by the religious hypothesis is in no
way different from that dictated by the naturalistic
hypothesis, then religious faith is a pure superfluity,
better pruned away, and controversy about its legitimacy is
a piece of idle trifling, unworthy of serious minds. I
myself believe, of course, that the religious hypothesis
gives to the world an expression which specifically
determines our reactions, and makes them in a large part
unlike what they might be on a purely naturalistic scheme of
belief.
6 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, P. 353, 2d edition. London,
1874.