if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman
to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she
would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not
cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as
decisively as if he went and married some one else?
Skepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option
of a certain particular kind of risk. <Better risk loss of
truth than chance of error>, -- that is' your faith-vetoer's
exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as
the believer is; he is backing the field against the
religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the
religious hypothesis against the field. To preach skepticism
to us as a duty until 'sufficient evidence' for religion be
found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in
presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our
fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to
our hope that it may be true. It is not intellect against
all passions, then; it is only intellect with one passion
laying down its law. And by what, forsooth, is the supreme
wisdom of this passion warranted? Dupery for dupery, what
proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse
than dupery through fear? I, for one, can see no proof; and
I simply refuse obedience to the scientist's command to
imitate his kind of option, in a case where my own stake is
important enough to give me the right to choose my own form
of risk. If religion be true and the evidence for it be
still insufficient, I do not wish, by putting your
extinguisher upon my nature (which feels to me as if it had
after all some business in this matter), to forfeit my sole
chance in life of getting upon the winning side, -- that
chance depending, of course, on my willingness to run the
risk of acting as if my passional need of taking the world
religiously might be prophetic and right.

     All this is on the supposition that it really may be
prophetic and right, and that, even to us who are discussing
the matter, religion is a live hypothesis which may be true.
Now, to most of us religion comes in a still further way
that makes a veto on our active faith even more illogical.
The more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is
represented in our religions as having personal form. The
universe is no longer a mere  to us, but a , if we
are religious; and any relation that may be possible from
person to person might be possible here. For instance,
although in one sense we are passive portions of the
universe, in another we show a curious autonomy, as if we
were small active centers on our own account. We feel, too,
as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own
active good-will, as if evidence might be forever withheld
from us unless we met the hypothesis half-way. To take a
trivial illustration: just as a man who in a company of
gentlemen made no advances, asked a warrant for every
concession, and believed no one's word without proof, would
cut himself off by such churlishness from all the social
rewards that a more trusting spirit would earn, -- so here,
one who should shut himself up in snarling logicality and
try to make the gods extort his recognition willy-nilly, or
not get it at all, might cut himself off forever from his
only opportunity of making the gods' acquaintance. This
feeling, forced on us we know not whence, that by
obstinately believing that there are gods (although not to
do so would be so easy both for our logic and our life) we
are doing the universe the deepest service we can, seems
part of the living essence of the religious hypothesis. If
the hypothesis  true in all its parts, including this
one, then pure intellectualism, with its veto on our making
willing advances, would be an absurdity; and some
participation of our sympathetic nature would be logically
required. I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to
accepting the agnostic rules for truth-seeking, or willfully
agree to keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot do
so for this plain reason, that <a rule of thinking which
would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds
of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be
an irrational rule>. That for me is the long and short of
the formal logic of the situation, no matter what the kinds
of truth might materially be.

     I confess I do not see how this logic can be escaped.
But sad experience makes me fear that some of you may still
shrink from radically saying with me, <in abstractor> that
we have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis
that is live enough to tempt our will. I suspect, however,
that if this is so, it is because you have got away from the
abstract logical point of view altogether, and are thinking
(perhaps without realizing it) of some particular religious
hypothesis which for you is dead. The freedom to 'believe
what we will' you apply to the case of some patent
superstition; and the faith you think of is the faith
defined by the schoolboy when he said, " Faith is when you
believe something that you know ain't true." I can only
repeat that this is misapprehension. <In concreto>, the
freedom to believe can only cover living options which the
intellect of the individual cannot by itself resolve; and
living options never seem absurdities to him who has them to
consider. When I look at the religious question as it really
puts itself to concrete men, and when I think of all the
possibilities which both practically and theoretically it
involves, then this command that we shall put a stopper on
our heart, instincts, and courage, and  -- acting of