Page:Education and Life; (IA educationlife00bakerich).pdf/186



Mark Twain quotes a schoolboy as saying: "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." This definition is turned from humor into seriousness by some modern thinkers when they charge immorality against all whose beliefs are not scientifically established on sufficient evidence. They look upon what they consider unwarranted beliefs as a species of lying to one's self, demoralizing to intellect and character. If no element of faith may anywhere be tolerated, these same thinkers should reëxamine their own foundations. The only thorough agnostic in history or literature, agnostic even toward his own agnosticism, is Charles Kingsley's Raphael Aben-Ezra. Let us listen to him. "Here am I, at last! fairly and safely landed at the very bottom of the bottomless No man, angel or demon can this day cast it in my teeth that I am weak enough to believe or disbelieve any phenomenon or theory in or concerning heaven or earth; or even that any such heaven, earth, phenomena or theories exist—or otherwise."

In a last analysis our very foundation principles rest on a ground of faith, and a clear knowledge of this fact may make us more humble in the presence of other claims on our belief. Whenever the adventurous philosophic mind gazes over the dizzy edge at the "bottomless," it draws back and gains