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Rh A desperate apologist might say that, just as it is possible that such a man's conviction was due to education, it is also possible that it is due to a personal sense. You remember how Descartes, trying to bring his beliefs down to something which was absolutely certain, and might therefore be used as a safe foundation upon which to build, said: "I think, therefore I am." It is—I should agree with Descartes anyway—a plain declaration of the mind and is authoritative. Well, why may not some other voice or power or sense—"Don't press me for exact definitions," this type of apologist implores—say with equal authority within me: "God exists." The answer is simple. Things are not to be multiplied without necessity. You have a mind which is quite capable of saying to you, "God exists," and if you say that you have in addition this mystic voice, you must prove it. You can't. Your conviction may tell you a good deal about religion, but it can tell you nothing about itself.

In another volume (Little Blue Book No. 1060, The Futility of Belief in God) I have considered this religious sense or instinct from another point of view, and I gave there certain considerations which really dispense us from dealing further with it. The first is that it