Nineteenth-Century Science and Religion 179 



deals, in order that the rule of conduct may be precise, one must 

 have a more determinate idea of the specific character of that person. 

 Will it be necessary to act towards the personality of God as towards 

 any mortal person ? Or is it necessary to distinguish this special 

 form of conduct ? And hov/ will it be possible to distinguish if 

 the character proper to the Divine Reality is not determined ? 



Practical action always supposes an opinion, although it is only 

 implicit, and not expressed. When I act in a certain manner with 

 regard to a thing, I tacitly recognise that it possesses those charac- 

 teristics which make my action possible and which give it a mean- 

 ing. If I treat an object as a person, I implicitly consider it such. 

 Dogma therefore, if it gives the rules of action towards God, must 

 contain within itself a totality of knowledge with regard to the 

 Divine Being and to His relationships with our consciousness and 

 with the world. This discernible content can even be indeter- 

 minate in all its particulars, but must at least be such as to dis- 

 tinguish religious action from any other form of conduct. And if 

 I act in a certain way, it means that I accept that knowledge upon 

 which my conduct is based. He who finds difficulties in accepting 

 dogmas theoretically will certainly not persuade himself to act in 

 conformity with them. For instance, he who considers the 

 attribution of personality to God as absurd will certainly not come 

 to treat God as a person. In short, the practical significance of 

 dogmas is not separable from their theoretical content. He who 

 accepts the one must accept also the other ; he who refuses the one 

 must refuse also the other. 



Let it be remarked further that, in order to believe, it is not 

 sufficient to will. The will does not create, nor does it destroy 

 belief. Faith in its instinctive phase previous to the period of 

 logical reflection (as we see in ignorant people) is based on impulses 

 of an emotional character, upon which the will has no power. The 

 feelings can neither generate nor destroy themselves within us by 

 an act of will. Just as one does not love because one wishes to love, 

 so one does not believe because one wishes to believe. When the 

 period of logical reflection arrives, instinctive faith either persists 

 and is reinforced by rational motives, or it gives place in the 

 individual consciousness to the criticism of reason. 



In this last case no effort of the will will be able to resurrect it 

 from its ruins ; because, if the emotional motives upon which 

 ingenuous faith is based no longer exist, the will, in order to make 



