Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/330

Rh reflect upon their mere content, and not upon the processes by which we get them. But if we interpret them rightly, we shall see that they ought to be regarded as beliefs, taken for the first on risk, and because the risk is worth taking.

Sometimes we hear men asserting that their beliefs are independent of their will. Such a man will express himself in some such way as the following: —

“I try to conquer prejudice; but having done this, I can do no more. My belief, whatever it is, forms itself in me. I look on. My will has nothing to do with the matter. I can will to walk or eat; but I cannot will to believe. I might as well will that my blood should circulate.”

But is this expression a fair one? Does such a man really remain passive in the struggle that goes on within him? We think not. These beliefs in such a man have resulted, we hold, from a sort of struggle between him and the surrounding world. The world has tried sometimes to check his thought, and to confine it to one channel; sometimes to confuse his thought, and to scatter it into spray before the quick, heavy blows of innumerable, disconnected sense apparitions. But the man, if he is a man of energy, has controlled the current of his thought. He has fought hard, now for freedom from oppressive narrowness of thought, now for wholeness and unity of thought; and perhaps he has in so far con-