352 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



God, or in anything, for " freewill " changes would not be " freewill" 

 changes, if they had their ground in anything that is or has been. 

 He sees clearly that the watchman which he has set on the wall to tell 

 him of the night has no other task than to come down from time to 

 time and inform him that it is conceivable that something may happen, 

 but God alone can know what that something may be. Why keep a 

 man out in the cold just for this ? Let us rather bring him down and 

 put him beside the fire. 



And Schopenhauer is, I think, more nearly right than he usually 

 was when he was in the body and on this planet, which science will not 

 recognize to be a " freewill " planet. Surely it is not reasonable to 

 take comfort in mere uncertainties as such — in promises which promise 

 nothing. A reasonable hope, even a faintly reasonable hope, must 

 have " some outlines and shadows " of a foundation, as Maritornes, 

 though a sinner, had " some outlines and shadows of a Christian." 



May we, then, harbor no hopes unless they are reasonable hopes? 

 May we never hope against hope? May we never lighten dark hours 

 by insisting that sometime the dawn must come? 



I should be the last to insist that we must be as coldly rational as 

 this. One of our problems is the problem of getting through life and 

 of being happy and cheerful if we can. One can, as a help to this, 

 embrace a faith, clearly recognizing that it is a faith and not a scien- 

 tifically established doctrine. One can look on the bright side of 

 things, knowing well enough that the bright side is not the only side, 

 and yet preventing one's mind from dwelling upon what lies in the 

 shadow. 



I can not see that this would, in itself, do harm. We are concerned 

 with a rule of life, and one may adopt such a rule without necessarily 

 clouding one's intellect or repudiating the open mind. But when one 

 undertakes to bolster up a faith adopted in this way, by the invention 

 of arbitrary metaphysical hypotheses, which introduce confusion into the 

 science of ethics, and which make of this orderly world in which we 

 live a realm of anarchy, a scene of disorder, in which prudence and 

 forethought and knowledge lose their significance — when one does this, 

 one goes, I maintain, beyond what is permissible, and one does harm. 



It has been well said that one must not judge of a man's intellect 

 from the religious doctrines which he elects to embrace. It is the 

 man who chooses these things; not the mere intellect. The man may 

 be acute, and he may be learned; and he may, nevertheless, hold opin- 

 ions which seem to us narrow and unenlightened. Too many things 

 go to the determination of the religious belief of a given individual, to 

 enable us to judge him in summary fashion. 



And is it not somewhat the same in philosophy ? I do not say that 

 it ought to be just the same in philosophy; but, as a matter of fact, 



