The Days of a Man 



1920 



My view 

 of prayer 



of the method by which the conclusions are reached. 

 We thus have an acceptable hypothesis on which to 

 act until the returns from personal experience begin 

 to come in. 



As to the fundamental coordination of all which 

 exists, known or unknown, any consistent use of the 

 word "Universe" implicitly asserts it. Man himself 

 is able with fair success to make his way in the Cos- 

 mos; obviously then he is not utterly alien. Not only 

 does his continued existence prove him not alien, 

 but furthermore, by taking thought, he can hold 

 his own against the forces of nature and thus in 

 some degree shape his own career. A similar line of 

 argument is shown to apply to every concrete thing 

 of which we are cognizant. The burden of disproof 

 of Mr. Klyce's thesis lies on him who, within the con- 

 fines of the Universe, can conceive anything matter, 

 spirit, life, space, or time which lies outside it. 



I also venture to reprint in these pages a few para- 

 graphs I recently wrote by way of foreword to a 

 special edition of Mr. Field's "Prayer," 1 because 

 they express my attitude toward a certain phase of 

 religious emotion. 



This exquisite poem, as I stated, tells the story of 

 a crisis of feeling in the poet's own career. It touches 

 the experience of thousands of sincere and thoughtful 

 youths who in their studies reach what seems to be 

 the parting of the ways. The University deals with 

 actual truth, with the Universe as it is not with 

 opinion, however plausible, or tradition, however 

 venerable. "The winds of freedom" blow on its 

 heights; whatever is not fastened on the "solid ground 



1 See Vol. I, Chapter xvn, page 408. 



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