12 THE WORKING FAITH OF 



occasion, and define objects by reference to our own ends. 

 But what these objects veritably are we do not know. 

 Truth, in the old sense, we should not seek, it is said : it 

 is the unattainable ideal of the Intellectualist. And the 

 Intellectualist is the apathetic looker-on at life, the blood- 

 less remnant of man which deals with abstractions, and 

 does nothing to help the world. Let us be modest and 

 Pragmatists if the combination is possible. 



Now, I do not consider that this diffidence is of much 

 practical consequence so far as research into the truths of 

 nature is concerned. The faith that the physical world is 

 a cosmos, and that its great uniformities can be discovered 

 by patient inquiry, is too profound to be disturbed by 

 such academic doubts. There is no evidence that men of 

 science are about to change their methods, so as to interpret 

 facts in the light of their own needs, or to will them into 

 accord with their desires. If they seek theories that 

 "work," they mean by "working" the production of 

 effects which are intelligible, accordant at once with the 

 nature of things and the nature of mind. 



But this sceptical prejudice touches inquiry into the 

 phenomena of the social, moral, and religious life much 

 more deeply. In this region the faith in the objective 

 order is feeble and comparatively new. Religion, indeed, 

 teaches it ; for religion is an optimist. It is a theoretical 

 and practical faith that what is best must be real. Poetry 

 also maintains it, and most of all have the greater modern 

 poets, from Wordsworth to Tennyson and Browning, 

 taught that God dwells in the mind of man and rules the 

 caprice of human history. But there is a long and difficult 

 way to travel from the inspired insight of religion and 

 poetry to the reasoned conviction of philosophy and 



