Perhaps there is nobody who would
sacrifice his life for the sake of maintaining that the three angles of
a triangle are together equal to two right angles, for such a truth does
not demand the sacrifice of our life; but, on the other hand, there are
many who have lost their lives for the sake of maintaining their
religious faith. Indeed it is truer to say that martyrs make faith than
that faith makes martyrs. For faith is not the mere adherence of the
intellect to an abstract principle; it is not the recognition of a
theoretical truth, a process in which the will merely sets in motion our
faculty of comprehension; faith is an act of the will--it is a movement
of the soul towards a practical truth, towards a person, towards
something that makes us not merely comprehend life, but that makes us
live.[45]
Faith makes us live by showing us that life, although it is dependent
upon reason, has its well-spring and source of power elsewhere, in
something supernatural and miraculous. Cournot the mathematician, a man
of singularly well-balanced and scientifically equipped mind, has said
that it is this tendency towards the supernatural and miraculous that
gives life, and that when it is lacking, all the speculations of the
reason lead to nothing but affliction of spirit (_Traite de
l'enchainement des idees fondamentales dans les sciences et dans
l'histoire_, Sec. 329). And in truth we wish to live.
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