gel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married some one
else? Scepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option of a
certain particular kind of risk. _Better risk loss of truth than
chance of error_,--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is
actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing
the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is
backing the religious hypothesis against the field. To preach
scepticism to us as a duty until {27} 'sufficient evidence' for
religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in
presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its
being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may
be true. It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only
intellect with one passion laying down its law. And by what, forsooth,
is the supreme wisdom of this passion warranted? Dupery for dupery,
what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than
dupery through fear? I, for one, can see no proof; and I simply refuse
obedience to the scientist's command to imitate his kind of option, in
a case where my own stake is important enough to give me the right to
choose my own form of risk. If religion be true and the evidence for
it be still insufficient, I do not wish, by putting your extinguisher
upon my nature (which feels to me as if it had after all some business
in this matter), to forfeit my sole chance in life of getting upon the
winning side,--that chance depending, of course, on my willingness to
run the risk of acting as if my passional need of taking the world
religiously might be prophetic and right.

All this is on the supposition that it really may be prophetic and
right, and that, even to us who are discussing the matter, religion is
a live hypothesis which may be true. Now, to most of us religion comes
in a still further way that makes a veto on our active faith even more
illogical. The more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is
represented in our religions as having personal form. The universe is
no longer a mere _It_ to us, but a _Thou_, if we are religious; and any
relation that may be possible from person to person might be possible
{28} here. For instance, although in one sense we are passive portions
of the universe, in another we show a curious autonomy, as if we were
small active centres on our own account. We feel, too, as if