mind between one man and another. _Do you like me or not?_--for
example. Whether you do or not depends, in countless instances, on
whether I meet you half-way, am willing to assume that you must like
me, and show you trust and expectation. The previous faith on my part
in your liking's existence is in such cases what makes {24} your liking
come. But if I stand aloof, and refuse to budge an inch until I have
objective evidence, until you shall have done something apt, as the
absolutists say, _ad extorquendum assensum meum_, ten to one your
liking never comes. How many women's hearts are vanquished by the mere
sanguine insistence of some man that they _must_ love him! he will not
consent to the hypothesis that they cannot. The desire for a certain
kind of truth here brings about that special truth's existence; and so
it is in innumerable cases of other sorts. Who gains promotions,
boons, appointments, but the man in whose life they are seen to play
the part of live hypotheses, who discounts them, sacrifices other
things for their sake before they have come, and takes risks for them
in advance? His faith acts on the powers above him as a claim, and
creates its own verification.

A social organism of any sort whatever, large or small, is what it is
because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the
other members will simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired result
is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its
existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in
one another of those immediately concerned. A government, an army, a
commercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team, all exist on
this condition, without which not only is nothing achieved, but nothing
is even attempted. A whole train of passengers (individually brave
enough) will be looted by a few highwaymen, simply because the latter
can count on one another, while each passenger fears that if he makes a
movement of resistance, he will be shot before any one else backs him
up. If we believed that the whole car-full would rise {25} at once
with us, we should each severally rise, and train-robbing would never
even be attempted. There are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at
all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming. _And where faith
in a fact can help create the fact_, that would be an insane logic
which should say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the
'lowe