are, I think, as I said,
assumptions we are bound to make, if we are to give any meaning to
life. We might perhaps call them 'postulates of the will'; and our
attitude, when we adopt them, that of faith."

"Faith!" protested Wilson, "that is a dangerous word!"

"It is," I agreed. "Yet I doubt whether we can dispense with it.
Only we must remember that to have 'faith' in a proposition is not to
affirm that it is true, but to live as we should do if it were. It
is, in fact, an attitude of the will, not of the understanding; the
attitude of the general going into battle, not of the philosopher in
his closet."

"But," he objected, "where we do not know, the proper attitude is
suspense of mind."

"In many matters, no doubt," I replied, "but surely not in those with
which we are dealing. For we must live or die; and if we are to choose
to do either, we must do so by virtue of some assumption about the
Good."

"But why should we choose to do either? Why should not we simply
wait?"

"But wait how? wait affirming or denying? active or passive? Is it
possible to wait without adopting an attitude? Is not waiting itself
an attitude, an acting on the assumption that it is good to wait?"

"But, at any rate, it does not involve assumptions as large as those
which you are trying to make us accept."

"I am not trying to make you do anything; I am only trying to discover
what you make yourself do. And do you, as a matter of fact, really
dispute the main conclusions to which we have come, or rather, if you
will accept my phrase, the main 'postulates of the will' which we have
elicited?"

"What are they? Let me have them again."

"Well," I said, "here they are. First, that Good has some meaning."

"Agreed!"

"Second, that we know something about that meaning."

"Doubtful!" said Dennis. "But it will be no use now to resume that
controversy."

"No," I replied, "only I thought I had shown that if we know nothing
about it, then, for us, it has no meaning; and so our first assumption
is also destroyed, and with it all significance in life."

"Well," he said, "go on. We can't go over all that again."

"Third," I continued, "that among our experiences the one which comes
nearest to Good is that which we called love."

"Possible!" said Dennis, "but a very tentative approximation."

"Certainly," I agreed, "and subject to constant revision."

"And after that?"

"Well," I said, "now comes the point Audubon raised. Is it nec