called? Because they think, as a leading biologist, now
dead, once said to me, that even if such a thing were true,
scientists ought to band together to keep it suppressed and
concealed. It would undo the uniformity of Nature and all
sorts of other things without which scientists cannot carry
on their pursuits. But if this very man had been shown
something which as a scientist he might  with telepathy,
he might not only have examined the evidence, but even have
found it good enough. This very law which the logicians
would impose upon us -- if I may give the name of logicians
to those who would rule out our willing nature here -- is
based on nothing but their own natural wish to exclude all
elements form which they, in their professional quality of
logicians, can find no use.

     Evidently, then, our non-intellectual nature does
influence our convictions. There are passional tendencies
and volitions which run before and others which come after
belief, and it is only the latter that are too late for the
fair; and they are not too late when the previous passional
work has been already in their own direction. Pascal's
argument, instead of being powerless, then seems a regular
clincher, and is the last stroke needed to make our faith in
masses and holy water complete. The state of things is
evidently far from simple; and pure insight and logic,
whatever they might do ideally, are not the only things that
really do produce our creeds.

     4. Thesis of the Essay. Our next duty, having
recognized this mixed-up state of affairs, is to ask whether
it be simply reprehensible and pathological, or whether, on
the contrary, we must treat it as a normal element in making
up our minds. The thesis I defend is, briefly stated, this:
<Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must,
decide an o option between propositions, whenever it is a
genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on
intellectual grounds ; for to say, under such circumstances,
" Do not decide, but leave the question open," is itself a
passional decision, -- just like deciding yes or no, -- and
is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.> The
thesis thus abstractly expressed will, I trust, soon become
quite clear. But I must first indulge in a bit more of
preliminary work.

     5. Empiricism and Absolutism. It will be observed that
for the purposes of this discussion we are on 'dogmatic '
ground, -- ground, I mean, which leaves systematic
philosophical skepticism altogether out of account. The
postulate that there is truth, and that it is the destiny of
our minds to attain it, we are deliberately resolving to
make, though the skeptic will not make it. We part company
with him, therefore, absolutely, at this point. But the
faith that truth exists, and that our minds can find it, may
be held in two ways. We may talk of the  way and
of the  way of believing in truth. The
absolutists in this matter say that we not only can attain
to knowing truth, but we can  when we have attained to
knowing it; while the empiricists think that although we may
attain it, we cannot infallibly know when. To  is one
thing, and to know for certain  we know is another.
One may hold to the first being possible without the second;
hence the empiricists and the absolutists, although neither
of them is a skeptic in the usual philosophic sense of the
term, show very different degrees of dogmatism in their
lives.

     If we look at the history of opinions, we see that the
empiricist tendency has largely prevailed in science, while
in philosophy the absolutist tendency has had everything its
own way. The characteristic sort of happiness, indeed, which
philosophies yield has mainly consisted in the conviction
felt by each successive school or system that by it bottom-
certitude had been attained. "Other philosophies are
collections of opinions, mostly false;  philosophy gives
standing-ground forever," -- who does not recognize in this
the key-note of every system worthy of the name? A system,
to be a system at all, must come as a  system,
reversible in this or that detail, perchance, but in its
essential features never!

     Scholastic orthodoxy, to which one must always go when
one wishes to find perfectly clear statement, has
beautifully elaborated this absolutist conviction in a
doctrine which it calls that of ' objective evidence.' If,
for example, I am unable to doubt that I now exist before
you, that two is less than three, or that if all men are
mortal then I am mortal too, it is because these things
illumine my intellect irresistibly. The final ground of this
objective evidence possessed by certain propositions is the
<adaequatio intellectus nostri cum re>. The certitude it
brings involves an <apititudinem ad extorquendum certum
assensum> on the part of the truth envisaged, and on the
side of the subject a <quietem in cognitione>, when once the
object is mentally received, that leaves no possibility of
doubt behind; and in the whole transaction nothing operates
but the <entitas ipsa> of the object and the <entitas ipsa>
of the mind. We slouchy modern thinkers dislike to talk in
Latin, -- indeed, we dislike to talk in set terms at all;
but at bottom our own state of mind is very much like this
whenever we uncritically abandon ourselves: You believe in