Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/354

Rh postulate, it is sure that science makes the postulate, and does not give any deeper basis for it. For natural science it is a faith.

Now this faith, not blind faith but postulate, not basely submitted to merely because we must submit to it, but boldly assumed because we think it worth the risk, wherein does it differ from what our fundamental religious faith would be if we made of that also no mere dogmatic creed, but a general assumption, no mere passive trust, but an active postulate? Beneath all the beliefs that we could not demonstrate in our last chapter, lay the determination not so much to prove one cast-iron system of dogmas, as to find some element of reality that shoidd have an infinite worth. The world should be at least as high as our highest conception of goodness. And to this end the partial evil should be in deepest reality universal good, even though our imperfect eyes could never show to us how this could be, — could never see through the illusion to the “imageless truth” beneath. Therefore, although we vainly sought among the Powers of the world for proof of all this, may we not still hope to approach the Eternal Reality with these postulates, and to say: “Though thou revealest to us nothing, yet we believe thee good. And we do so because this faith of ours is a worthy one.” Possibly then our Religion will be just the highest form of our conduct itself, our determination to make the world good for ourselves, whatever baseness experience shows us in it. Then we can say: Just as science is undaunted by the vision of the world of confusion, so shall our re-