, there's little hope for us. Go away from
all this and get straightened out, make yourself acquainted with the
modern trend in literature and criticism, with modern history, find out
what's being done in the field of education, read the modern sciences,
especially biology, and psychology and sociology, and try to get a
glimpse of the fundamental human needs underlying such phenomena as the
labour and woman's movements. God knows I've just begun to get my
glimpse, and I've floundered around ever since I left college.... I don't
mean to say we can ever see the whole, but we can get a clew, an idea,
and pass it on to our children. You have children, haven't you?"

"Yes," I said....

He said nothing--he seemed to be looking out of the window.

"Then the scientific point of view in your opinion hasn't done away with
religion?" I asked presently.

"The scientific point of view is the religious point of view," he said
earnestly, "because it's the only self-respecting point of view. I can't
believe that God intended to make a creature who would not ultimately
weigh his beliefs with his reason instead of accepting them blindly.
That's immoral, if you like--especially in these days."

"And are there, then, no 'over-beliefs'?" I said, remembering the
expression in something I had read.

"That seems to me a relic of the method of ancient science, which was
upside down,--a mere confusion with faith. Faith and belief are two
different things; faith is the emotion, the steam, if you like, that
drives us on in our search for truth. Theories, at a stretch, might be
identified with 'over-beliefs' but when it comes to confusing our
theories with facts, instead of recognizing them as theories, when it
comes to living by 'over-beliefs' that have no basis in reason and
observed facts,--that is fatal. It's just the trouble with so much of our
electorate to-day--unreasoning acceptance without thought."

"Then," I said, "you admit of no other faculty than reason?"

"I confess that I don't. A great many insights that we seem to get from
what we call intuition I think are due to the reason, which is
unconsciously at work. If there were another faculty that equalled or
transcended reason, it seems to me it would be a very dangerous thing for
the world's progress. We'd come to rely on it rather than on ourselves
the trouble with the world is that it has been relying on it. Reason is
the mind--it leaps to the stars without realizing always