CHAPTER XVII 



FAITH 



Faith is the sister of conscience. Faith is the intuitive 

 acceptance of the Tightness of another person or being, just 

 as Conscience is the acceptance of the intuitively seen Tight- 

 ness in one's self. Faith enables an immature judgment to 

 achieve the heights of conduct indicated by a greater one. It 

 is a manifestation of educational power. Receptivity of edu- 

 cational ideas is the natural attitude of psychological imma- 

 turity in the youth of highly cultivated beings. It is the mental 

 counterpart of the physical aptitude, which is inherited. And 

 it is observable that in certain natures the receptivity remains 

 active in mature life. Now when such a nature is addressed 

 by appeals which convince overwhelmingly, there is at once 

 apparent all the strength of belief; and all that activity of 

 conscience which goes with older knowledge. It is in fact 

 a repetition in later life, of the confidence of the child in the 

 supreme wisdom of the parent. The effectiveness of such 

 control (for such it is) depends, first, upon the physical apti- 

 tude of the pupil, and next upon the fitness, and the disin- 

 terested sincerity, of the teacher, which appeals emotionally 

 to the deep-rooted instincts of altruism. The instinct for 

 faith is formed in beings well endowed physically, who per- 

 ceived their inferiority in judgment and are ready to enlarge 



it by attachment to superior wisdom. Such creatures sur- 

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