ter, the
irrationality or immorality of bad customs, oppressions, social
injustices; but the people who have led the revolt against these things
have generally been the people who have felt intensely about them. So
it is with the more distinctly religious knowledge. Religious thought
and insight are largely dependent upon the emotions to which religious
{130} ideas and beliefs appeal. The absence of religious thought and
definite religious belief is very often (I am far from saying always)
due to a want of interest in Religion; but that does not prove that
religious thought is not the work of the intellect, any more than the
fact that a man is ignorant of Politics because he takes no interest in
Politics proves that political truth is a mere matter of emotion, and
has nothing to do with the understanding. Thought is always guided by
interest--a truth which must not be distorted with a certain modern
school of thought, if indeed it can properly be called thought, into
the assertion that thinking is nothing but willing, and that therefore
we are at liberty to think just what we please.

And that leads on to a further point. Emotion and desire are very
closely connected with the will. A man's moral insight and the
development of his thought about moral questions depend very largely
upon the extent to which he acts up to whatever light he has. Vice, as
Aristotle put it, is _phthartike arches_--destructive of moral first
principles. Moral insight is largely dependent upon character. And so
is religious insight. Thus it is quite true to say that religious
belief depends in part upon the state of the will. This doctrine has
been so scandalously abused by many Theologians and Apologists that I
use it with great hesitation. I have no sympathy {131} with the idea
that we are justified in believing a religious doctrine merely because
we wish it to be true, or with the insinuation that non-belief in a
religious truth is always or necessarily due to moral obliquity. But
still it is undeniable that a man's ethical and religious beliefs are
to some extent affected by the state of his will. That is so with all
knowledge to some extent; for progress in knowledge requires attention,
and is largely dependent upon interest. If I take no interest in the
properties of curves or the square root of -1, I am not very likely to
make a good mathematician. This connexion of knowledge with interest
applies in an exceptional degree t