orces that the hidden world may contain?
In other cases divinations based on inner interests have proved
prophetic enough. Take science itself! Without an imperious inner
demand on our part for ideal logical and mathematical harmonies, we
should never have attained to proving that such harmonies be hidden
between all the chinks and interstices of the crude natural world.
Hardly a law has been established in science, hardly a fact
ascertained, which was not first sought after, often with sweat and
blood, to gratify an inner need. Whence such needs come from we do not
know; we find them in us, and biological psychology so far only classes
them with Darwin's 'accidental variations.' {56} But the inner need of
believing that this world of nature is a sign of something more
spiritual and eternal than itself is just as strong and authoritative
in those who feel it, as the inner need of uniform laws of causation
ever can be in a professionally scientific head. The toil of many
generations has proved the latter need prophetic. Why _may_ not the
former one be prophetic, too? And if needs of ours outrun the visible
universe, why _may_ not that be a sign that an invisible universe is
there? What, in short, has authority to debar us from trusting our
religious demands? Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she
can only say what is, not what is not; and the agnostic "thou shalt not
believe without coercive sensible evidence" is simply an expression
(free to any one to make) of private personal appetite for evidence of
a certain peculiar kind.

Now, when I speak of trusting our religious demands, just what do I
mean by 'trusting'? Is the word to carry with it license to define in
detail an invisible world, and to anathematize and excommunicate those
whose trust is different? Certainly not! Our faculties of belief were
not primarily given us to make orthodoxies and heresies withal; they
were given us to live by. And to trust our religious demands means
first of all to live in the light of them, and to act as if the
invisible world which they suggest were real. It is a fact of human
nature, that men can live and die by the help of a sort of faith that
goes without a single dogma or definition. The bare assurance that
this natural order is not ultimate but a mere sign or vision, the
external staging of a many-storied universe, in which spiritual forces
have the last word and are eternal,--this bare {57} assurance