victorious. The Prime Minister of a country postulates that he can do his country better service than could the Opposition. We all postulate that our lives are worth the trouble. Yet we all know perfectly well that many just such postulates must in the nature of things be blunders. But they imply not blind faith, but active faith. With blind faith little good is done in the world; without active faith, expressed in postulates, very little practical good can be done from day to day. Blind faith is the ostrich behind the bush. The postulate stands out like the lion against the hunters. The wise shall live by postulates.
III.
But how is this postulating activity actually related to our knowledge of reality? Much more closely than one might suppose. Very much of our thought naturally rests upon a blind faith, or upon what many take to be a blind faith; but this, when we reflect upon it with due attention to the office it fills, is transformed before our eyes into practically unavoidable postulates. Such are the assumptions upon which our science rests in forming its ideal of an “universal formula.” There may indeed be some deeper basis for these postidates of science. But most men know nothing of this basis. And so, when we accepted in our last chapter these postulates, we had to admit that they are a kind of faith. If we then nevertheless objected to certain religious doctrines that they rest on insufficient evidence, we did this because they set themselves up as dogmas.
