Art and Science 



If it is again urged that it matters not to 

 us how much we may be alive in others, if 

 we are to know nothing about it, I reply that 

 the common instinct of all who are worth 

 considering gives the lie to such cynicism. I 

 see here present some who have achieved, 

 and others who no doubt will achieve, success 

 in literature. Will one of them hesitate to 

 admit that it is a lively pleasure to her to feel 

 that on the other side of the world some one 

 may be smiling happily over her work, and 

 that she is thus living in that person though 

 she knows nothing about it ? Here it seems 

 to me that true faith comes in. Faith does 

 not consist, as the Sunday School pupil said, 

 " in the power of believing that which we 

 know to be untrue." It consists in holding 

 fast that which the healthiest and most kindly 

 instincts of the best and most sensible men 

 and women are intuitively possessed of, with- 

 out caring to require much evidence further 

 than the fact that such people are so con- 

 vinced ; and for my own part I find the best 

 men and women I know unanimous in feel- 

 ing that life in others, even though we know 



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