tural knowledge _is_ enveloped in a larger world of
_some_ sort of whose residual properties we at present can frame no
positive idea.

Agnostic positivism, of course, admits this principle theoretically in
the most cordial terms, but insists that we must not turn it to any
practical use. We have no right, this doctrine tells us, to dream
dreams, or suppose anything about the unseen part of the universe,
merely because to do so may be for what we are pleased to call our
highest interests. We must always wait for sensible evidence for our
beliefs; and where such evidence is inaccessible we must frame no
hypotheses whatever. Of course this is a safe enough position _in
abstracto_. If a thinker had no stake in the unknown, no vital needs,
to live or languish according to what the unseen world contained, a
philosophic neutrality and refusal to believe either one way or the
other would be his wisest cue. But, unfortunately, neutrality is not
only inwardly difficult, it is also outwardly unrealizable, where our
relations to an alternative are practical and vital. This is because,
as the psychologists tell us, belief and doubt are living attitudes,
and involve conduct on our part. Our only way, for example, of
doubting, or refusing to believe, that a certain thing _is_, is
continuing to act as if it were _not_. If, for instance, {55} I refuse
to believe that the room is getting cold, I leave the windows open and
light no fire just as if it still were warm. If I doubt that you are
worthy of my confidence, I keep you uninformed of all my secrets just
as if you were _un_worthy of the same. If I doubt the need of insuring
my house, I leave it uninsured as much as if I believed there were no
need. And so if I must not believe that the world is divine, I can
only express that refusal by declining ever to act distinctively as if
it were so, which can only mean acting on certain critical occasions as
if it were _not_ so, or in an irreligious way. There are, you see,
inevitable occasions in life when inaction is a kind of action, and
must count as action, and when not to be for is to be practically
against; and in all such cases strict and consistent neutrality is an
unattainable thing.

And, after all, is not this duty of neutrality where only our inner
interests would lead us to believe, the most ridiculous of commands?
Is it not sheer dogmatic folly to say that our inner interests can have
no real connection with the f