are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe
that life _is_ worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
The 'scientific proof' that you are right may not be clear before the
day of judgment (or some stage of being which that expression may serve
to symbolize) is reached. But the faithful fighters of this hour, or
the beings that then and there will represent them, may then turn to
the faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with words like those
with which Henry IV. greeted the tardy Crillon after a great victory
had been gained: "Hang yourself, brave Crillon! we fought at Arques,
and you were not there."

[1] An Address to the Harvard Young Men's Christian Association.
Published in the International Journal of Ethics for October, 1895, and
as a pocket volume by S. B. Weston, Philadelphia, 1896.

[2] Quoted by George E. Waring in his book on Tyrol. Compare A.
Berard: Les Vaudois, Lyon, Storck, 1892.

{63}

THE SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY.[1]

I.

What is the task which philosophers set themselves to perform; and why
do they philosophize at all? Almost every one will immediately reply:
They desire to attain a conception of the frame of things which shall
on the whole be more rational than that somewhat chaotic view which
every one by nature carries about with him under his hat. But suppose
this rational conception attained, how is the philosopher to recognize
it for what it is, and not let it slip through ignorance? The only
answer can be that he will recognize its rationality as he recognizes
everything else, by certain subjective marks with which it affects him.
When he gets the marks, he may know that he has got the rationality.

What, then, are the marks? A strong feeling of ease, peace, rest, is
one of them. The transition from a state of puzzle and perplexity to
rational comprehension is full of lively relief and pleasure.

But this relief seems to be a negative rather than a positive
character. Shall we then say that the feeling of rationality is
constituted merely by the absence {64} of any feeling of irrationality?
I think there are very good grounds for upholding such a view. All
feeling whatever, in the light of certain recent psychological
speculations, seems to depend for its physical condition not on simple
discharge of nerve-currents, but on their discharge under arrest,
impediment, or resistance. Just as we feel no particular pleasure when
we breath