it inadequate. Here doubt and belief resemble one another.

The will-to-disbelieve is as necessary a part of our equipment as the will to believe: the two wills being indeed the same in principle, but the opposite in application. The former is a weapon of defence, a protection against deceivers, never more useful than when engaged in exposing shams, fraud and cant practised under the name of religion. The latter is a weapon of attack, the principle of all that is creative in human life. It is akin to love, the most valiant of all qualities, whether it appears in a tigress defending her cubs or in a martyr dying for mankind.

If we fall under the power of the will-to-disbelieve, we shall indeed be well protected from fraud, but ill equipped for the creation of new values, either in our own life or in that of others, which is the prime business of man. For this we need the will to believe that the new values are possible, which the will-to-disbelieve can always doubt.

I cannot agree with those philosophers who maintain that religion is based on the will-to-believe. The two are clearly connected; but it would be truer to say that the will-to-believe is based on religion. Religion encourages a man to act on the assumption that the best things are possible, and checks the will-to-disbelieve precisely at the point where it questions this. It is the God within the man which so acts, and the moment the man perceives its divine origin the will-to-believe acquires a new energy. God is not a product, but the author and living principle of the will-to-believe.

The will-to-disbelieve, if given a free rein, would at last involve us in a depth of scepticism indistinguishable from complete cowardice. But in actual life it never goes to this length, except in the world of pure dialectics and in asylums for the insane. However sceptically inclined a man may be, there comes a point where he suspends his will-to-disbelieve in favour of the proposition that Truth (and perhaps Beauty and Goodness also) is better than the opposite, though it is quite easy for anyone so minded, and with a little skill in dialectics, to find a point of view from which even this can be doubted. Unless the sceptic believed that Truth is better than its opposite why should he take the trouble to convict his opponent of error or to satisfy himself of the soundness of his own opinions? Clearly he has made his choice at that point—a truly heroic choice if we consider it—committing himself to a position which needs courage to maintain, and thereby proving that he is no coward. In his own way he has faced and bravely answered the question which, in one form or another, has to be faced and answered by everyone. He has chosen to be a hero.

Over every aspect of human life there hangs the prospect of a possible better, inviting us to achieve it, but without proof that we shall succeed, or even that it is worth our while to make the attempt. The coward within us asks for the proof; cries out that the venture is not safe, and summoning the will-to-disbelieve has no difficulty in finding reasons for rejecting the invitation. The hero, on the contrary, finds in the terms offered the exact conditions to which his nature is fitted to respond. He would rather create the proof by his own valour than have it for nothing from the outset. He is not dismayed at finding himself in a universe which puts him under no compulsion to believe in God, Freedom, Duty and Immortality. As a free soul he prefers not to be compelled to believe in anything—for how then could he be free? The offer of a logic that cannot be gainsaid does not attract him, for he knows very well that his will-to-disbelieve can gainsay any logic that may be produced—he can meet it all, if so minded, with the Everlasting No. He finds his own nature as hero exquisitely adapted to the nature of the universe as dangerous—on that side the ringing challenge, on this the joyous response; man and the universe engaged together as loyal confederates in the task of creating a better-than-what-is.

Such are the respective arguments of the coward and the hero. Let it be remembered that these are not the names of two different men. They are names for the same man, as one or other element of his nature comes uppermost. Both are clamant at this moment in you and me, clamant in you as you read these words, clamant in me as I write them.

The will-to-disbelieve is always most active where the controversial interest reigns supreme; least active where men, in a spirit of mutual loyalty, are engaged together in the positive attempt to achieve a better-than-what-is. Into the relations of true lovers the will-to-disbelieve never enters, though a Mephistopheles, standing by, can always find reasons enough for prompting it, and sneer at them for a brace of fools. The will of the true lovers is to believe in each other and to reject all suggestions to the contrary. They will trust each other to the uttermost, in spite of the fact that no conclusive reason can be given why they should do so—heroic lovers that they are! But whenever a human interest, great or small, is detached from its roots in reality and turned into a subject for the war of minds, every assertion made by the one side is a challenge to the other to assert the contrary. The will-to-disbelieve is then in its glory, and finds there are no lengths to which it cannot go. The more it is hammered, the greater its vigour, the greater its ingenuity, in hitting back. Meanwhile both sides are drifting further away from realities and the primary interest in dispute succumbing to the secondary interests of mere controversy. The dominant motive of the controversy has now ceased to be the search for truth and become the resolution of the disputants to overthrow their opponents and not be overthrown. There is no issue. From the nature of the forces engaged the controversy becomes endless.

As the mere plaything of professional controversialists the fate of religion can never be decided. The professional controversialists themselves do not desire that it should be; their interest is to keep the game up for ever; for if a final issue were reached their occupation would be gone. Happily for religion, its fate does not depend on the fortunes of this ever-swaying battle. It depends on the answer given by individual men and women to the question which faces them all over the gateway of life—"Wilt thou be a hero or a coward?"

Religion is one of those high things, and there are many such in life, which lose their meaning when they are over-defended, or over-explained. In explaining them we are apt to explain them away, and without being aware that we are doing so. Whenever the truths of religion are too much defended they are cheapened; and when cheapened they become incredible. Like the love of a man and a woman, or the belief we have in the loyalty of our dearest friends, or the joy we feel in the presence of beauty, or the grief of a broken heart, they resent being made into mere topics for discussion. For this reason religion has suffered as much from its would-be friends as from its avowed enemies. To official Defenders of the Faith, crowned, mitred or wigged, the Faith owes less than the Defenders in question have been wont to claim. I have even heard it suggested, by extremists, that there would be more believers in God if all the theologians would take themselves off.

If religion is founded on Reality, as we are so fond of asserting, we have no need to be over-anxious about its defence, since Reality can always be trusted in the long run to look after itself and its children. We compromise religion whenever our defence of it seems to imply that its fortunes depend on us or on our arguments, an impression too often created by apologetic literature—the impression of something naturally weak which needs an immense amount of argumentative coddling to keep it alive. I observe none of this in the presentation of religion by the Founder of Christianity. His freedom from anxiety for the