In the first place the idea of "Blind Faith" or "Unreasoning Belief" is one which involves a contradiction in terms. As Whately well says in his "Logic": "If a man resolves that he will implicitly receive _e.g._, in religious points, all the decisions of a certain Pastor, Church or Party, he has in doing so performed one act of private judgment (_i.e._, the result of reasoning), which includes all the rest." Hence it is impossible to dissociate Faith and Reason. Secondly, just as Courage, in its proper sense, does not mean feeling no fear but the overcoming of it; so Faith consists, not of having no doubts but of dispelling them, and this involves a deliberate exercise of the will in choosing between two possible alternatives; that is to say, an act of reasoning. Thirdly, I submit that Life is not a sort of crazy competition in which special awards are to be received for completing the course blindfold, but a phase in the general upward progress of man--whether considered collectively or individually--and that consequently any knowledge is desirable which will enable us consciously and intelligently to co-operate in the process. Finally, and I think that this puts the whole matter in one sentence, however clearly a man can see, he must still be able to believe his eyes. However plainly we can see the path, we must still believe that it leads in the right direction, however conclusively we may demonstrate a proposition, we are still dependent on our Faith in the validity of Reason and the veridicity of the observations on which it is based--and this is equally the case whether the latter be scientific measurements or spiritual experiences. The supreme effort of Faith, made by the most material of scientists no less than by the Saint, is the belief that the Cosmos, of which Reason is a part, is a coherent whole and not a Chaos. The second argument appears to me to be equally fissiparous. In the first place I should never dream of attempting to reduce the whole Cosmos to terms of mechanism. Any such idea would be infinitely repugnant to me. Moreover, the attempt would inevitably be foredoomed to failure since there are problems which are essentially insoluble. The first and most obvious of all--the problem of the nature and origin of Consciousness--is one to which we can never hope to find an answer. But quite apart from all this I entirely fail to see why the explanation of mechanism, using the word in its widest sense, should have any bearing on religion at all. Religion, by which I mean something more than a mere code of morals, is concerned rather with motives than with methods. If a child were to ask one why the sun and moon did not fall on to the earth, one might reply to the effect that they were prevented from doing so by the exercise of the Divine Will. Alternatively one might embark on a disquisition about the law of gravitation and planetary mechanics.