All the elemental, primary facts of life are faith's discoveries; we have no other means of finding them. By faith we discover our _selves_. We do not hold back from living until we can prove that we exist. We never can strictly prove that we exist. The very self that we are trying to demonstrate would have to be used in the demonstration. We have no other way of getting at ourselves except to take ourselves for granted--accepting "This main miracle that you are you, With power on your own act and on the world." As Mr. Chesterton remarked, "You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves." By faith all men go out to live as though their selves were real. By faith we accept the existence of the _outer world_. We do not restrain ourselves from acting as though the physical world were really there, until we can prove it. We never can strictly prove it; perhaps it is not there at all. When through a microscope an Indian was shown germs in the Ganges' water, to convince him of the peril of its use, he broke the instrument with his cane, as though when the microscope was gone, the facts had vanished too. In his philosophy all that we see is illusion. Perhaps this is true--the world a phantasm and our minds fooling us. But none of us believes it. And we do not believe it because we live by faith--the elemental faith on which all common sense and science rest and without which man's thought and work would halt--that our senses and our minds tell us the truth. "It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. _Reason itself is a matter of faith._ It is an act of faith to assert that one's thoughts have any relation to reality at all." By faith we even discover the _universe_. We cannot think of the world as a multiverse; we always think of it as having unity, and we do so whether as scientists we talk about the uniformity of nature, or as Christians we speak of one Creator. Not only, however, can no one demonstrate that this is a universe; _it positively does not look as though it were_. Opposing powers snarl at each other and clash in a disorder that gives to the casual observer not the slightest intimation that any unity is there. Thunder storms and little babies, volcanoes and Easter lilies, immeasurable nebulæ in the heavens and people getting married on the earth--what indescribable contrasts and confusions! Still we insist on thinking unity into this seeming anomaly, and out of it we wrest scientific doctrines about the uniformity of law. As Professor James, of Harvard, put it, "The principle of uniformity in nature has to be _sought_ under and in spite of the most rebellious appearances; and our conviction of its truth is far more like religious faith than like assent to a demonstration."