That which connects, or, rather than connects, subordinates,
faith to hope. And in fact we do not hope because we believe, but rather
we believe because we hope. It is hope in God, it is the ardent longing
that there may be a God who guarantees the eternity of consciousness,
that leads us to believe in Him.
But faith, which after all is something compound, comprising a
cognitive, logical, or rational element together with an affective,
biotic, sentimental, and strictly irrational element, is presented to us
under the form of knowledge. And hence the insuperable difficulty of
separating it from some dogma or other. Pure faith, free from dogmas,
about which I wrote a great deal years ago, is a phantasm. Neither is
the difficulty overcome by inventing the theory of faith in faith
itself. Faith needs a matter to work upon.
Believing is a form of knowing, even if it be no more than a knowing and
even a formulating of our vital longing. In ordinary language the term
"believing," however, is used in a double and even a contradictory
sense. It may express, on the one hand, the highest degree of the mind's
conviction of the truth of a thing, and, on the other hand, it may imply
merely a weak and hesitating persuasion of its truth. For if in one
sense believing expresses the firmest kind of assent we are capable of
giving, the expression "I believe that it is so, although I am not sure
of it," is nevertheless common in ordinary speech.
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