And just as there is logical truth, opposed to error, and moral truth,
opposed to falsehood, so there is also esthetic truth or verisimilitude,
which is opposed to extravagance, and religious truth or hope, which is
opposed to the inquietude of absolute despair. For esthetic
verisimilitude, the expression of which is sensible, differs from
logical truth, the demonstration of which is rational; and religious
truth, the truth of faith, the substance of things hoped for, is not
equivalent to moral truth, but superimposes itself upon it. He who
affirms a faith built upon a basis of uncertainty does not and cannot
lie.
And not only do we not believe with reason, nor yet above reason nor
below reason, but we believe against reason. Religious faith, it must be
repeated yet again, is not only irrational, it is contra-rational.
Kierkegaard says: "Poetry is illusion before knowledge; religion
illusion after knowledge. Between poetry and religion the worldly wisdom
of living plays its comedy. Every individual who does not live either
poetically or religiously is a fool" (_Afsluttende uvidenskabelig
Efterskrift_, chap. iv., sect. 2a, Sec. 2). The same writer tells us that
Christianity is a desperate sortie (_salida_). Even so, but it is only
by the very desperateness of this sortie that we can win through to
hope, to that hope whose vitalizing illusion is of more force than all
rational knowledge, and which assures us that there is always something
that cannot be reduced to reason.
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