194 BELIEFS AND EXISTENCES 



For one, I have no interest in the old, old scheme 

 of derogating from the worth of knowledge in 

 order to give an uncontrolled field for some special 

 beliefs to run riot in, be these beliefs even faith 

 in immortality, in some special sort of a Deity, 

 or in some particular brand of freedom. Any one 

 of our beliefs is subject to criticism, revision, and 

 even ultimate elimination through the development 

 of its own implications by intelligently directed 

 action. Because reason is a scheme of working out 

 the meanings of convictions in terms of one an 

 other and of the consequences they import in 

 further experience, convictions are the more, not 

 the less, amenable and responsible to the full exer 

 cise of reason. 1 



Thus we are put on the road to that most de- 



1 There will of course come in time with the development 

 of tMs point of view an organon of beliefs. The signs of 

 a genuine as against a simulated belief will be studied; 

 belief as a vital personal reaction will be discriminated from 

 habitual, incorporate, unquestioned (because unconsciously 

 exercised) traditions of social classes and professions. In 

 his &quot; Will to Believe &quot; Professor James has already laid 

 down two traits of genuine belief (viz., &quot; forced option,&quot; 

 and acceptance of responsibility for results) which are 

 almost always ignored in criticisms (really caricatures) of 

 his position. In the light of such an organon, one might 

 come to doubt whether belief in, say, immortality (as dis 

 tinct from hope on one side and a sort of intellectual bal 

 ance of probability of opinion on the other) can genuinely 

 exist at all. 



