Thus far in this chapter there has been no explicit mention of religious faith. We began with the fact that faith is indispensable to science as its starting-point. We do not wish to end with the suggestion that scientific faith can or ought to be stretched so as to make religious faith its logical or necessary consequence. On the contrary, the man who by a great act of faith accepts the Uniformity of Nature without evidence, and then resolves never to accept another statement without evidence, is quite safe: no one can make him believe in religion as long as he holds to his resolve--or in morality either. There is no evidence--and therefore he cannot believe--that a man ought to do what is right. If he does ever depart from his resolve as regards morality, it will be because in his heart--with its reasons which his reason knows not of--he wants to do right, not because there is any evidence. In most men the impulse to believe expends but does not exhaust itself in reason and morality. There is also the religious belief that all that happens to us is due to a Will not our own, in which we can trust and to which we can give our lives. For this belief there is no more evidence than there is for science: if a man will receive it, he must believe in it as he believes in science, that is, without evidence. If a man will receive it, he may, on the same condition as he believes in morality or science, viz. that he wants it. Any other condition is of his own making and is an act of his own will: if he says that he fain would believe, but cannot without evidence, that is a condition of his own making, imposed upon him by his own will--what science and morality both require cannot be immoral or unscientific, and they each require belief without evidence in order that they may exist at all. What logic postulates can hardly be illogical. It can be no necessary law of reason to check the impulse which gives to reason its initial impetus. We believe that science is true for no other reason than that we wish it to be true; and for every man, with regard to religion, the question is, does he wish it to be true? if it lay with him to decide, would he have it true? if he would, then it does lie with him to decide: let him be assured it is true. If he would not, let him ask his own heart, Why? Why does he wish there were no God? FOOTNOTES: [30] HUXLEY, _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 233. [31] HUXLEY, _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 245. [32] HUXLEY, _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 65. [33] HUXLEY, _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 54. [34] HUXLEY, _Method and Results_, p. 40. [35] _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 243. [36] _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 244. X. THE CHESS-BOARD We began, at the beginning of this book, by accepting evolution as a fact, and by asking the question: Granted that it is a fact, what follows? What does it mean for me? What light does it throw on the meaning of life?