BOOK THE SECOND.
OF BELIEFS.
2.1. MY PRIMARY ACT OF FAITH.
And now having stated my conception of the true relationship between our
thoughts and words to facts, having distinguished between the more
accurate and frequently verified propositions of science and the more
arbitrary and infrequently verified propositions of belief, and made
clear the spontaneous and artistic quality that inheres in all our moral
and religious generalizations, I may hope to go on to my confession of
faith with less misunderstanding.
Now my most comprehensive belief about the external and the internal and
myself is that they make one universe in which I and every part are
ultimately important. That is quite an arbitrary act of my mind. It is
quite possible to maintain that everything is a chaotic assembly, that
any part might be destroyed without affecting any other part. I do not
choose to argue against that. If you choose to say that, I am no more
disposed to argue with you than if you choose to wear a mitre in Fleet
Street or drink a bottle of ink, or declare the figure of Ally Sloper
more dignified and beautiful than the head of Jove. There is no Q.E.D.
that you cannot do so. You can. You will not like to go on with it, I
think, and it will not answer, but that is a different matter.
I dismiss the idea that life is chaotic because it leaves my life
ineffectual, and I cannot contemplate an ineffectual life patiently. I
am by my nature impelled to refuse that. I assert that it is not so. I
assert therefore that I am important in a scheme, that we are all
important in that scheme, that the wheel-smashed frog in the road and
the fly drowning in the milk are important and correlated with me. What
the scheme as a whole is I do not know; with my limited mind I cannot
know. There I become a Mystic. I use the word scheme because it is the
best word available, but I strain it in using it. I do not wish to imply
a schemer, but only order and co-ordination as distinguished from
haphazard. "All this is important, all this is profoundly significant."
I say it of the universe as a child that has not learnt to read might
say it of a parchment agreement. I cannot read the universe, but I can
believe that this is so.
And this unfounded and arbitrary declaration of the ultimate rightness
and significance of things I call the Act of Faith. It is my fundamental
religious confession. It is a voluntary and deliberate determination to
believe, a choice made.
