The facts of human nature are sufficiently complex to validate almost any hypothesis which may be projected into them. Therefore the assumptions upon which we essay our social contacts are all important. One reason why the social sciences can never attain the scientific prestige of the physical sciences to which they aspire is that the importance of hypotheses increases with the complexity and variability of the data into which they are projected. Every assumption is an hypothesis, and human nature is so complex that it justifies almost every assumption and prejudice with which either a scientific investigation or an ordinary human contact is initiated. A vital religion not only prompts men to venture the assumption that human beings are essentially trustworthy and lovable, but it endows them with the courage and inclination to maintain their hypothesis when immediate facts contradict it until fuller facts are brought in to verify it. Mere sentiment is easily defeated by life’s disappointing realities. Anatole France observed that if one started with the supposition that men are naturally good and virtuous, one inevitably ends by wishing to kill them all. Human nature is neither lovable nor trustworthy in its undisciplined state and a sentimental overestimate of its virtue may well result in the reaction to which Anatole France alludes. Yet its undeveloped resources are always greater than either a superficial or critical intelligence is able to fathom. There must be an element of faith in love if it is to be creative. “Love,” said Paul, “believes all things”; and it may be added that it saves its faith from absurdity by creating some of the evidence which justifies its assumptions. It “hopes till hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates.” Nothing less than a religious appreciation of personality, supported by a spiritual interpretation of the universe itself in terms of moral goodwill, will make love robust enough to overcome momentary disappointments and gain its final victory. The injunction of Jesus to his disciples to forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven, represents the natural social strategy of a robust and vital religious idealism, which subdues evil by its unswerving confidence in the good.