Faith

Faith is nobly seen when a man, standing like Columbus upon the shore with a dark, stormy Atlantic before him, resolves to sail, and although week after week no land be visible, still believes and still sails on; but it is nobler when there is no America as the goal of our venture, but something which is unsubstantial, as, for example, self-control and self-purification.  It is curious, by the way, that discipline of this kind should almost have disappeared.  Possibly it is because religion is now a matter of belief in certain propositions; but, whatever the cause may be, we do not train ourselves day by day to become better as we train ourselves to learn languages or science.  To return from this parenthesis, we say that when no applause nor even recognition is expected, to proceed steadily and alone for its own sake in the work of saving the soul is truer heroism than that which leads a martyr cheerfully to the stake.

Faith is at its best when we have to wrestle with despair, not only of ourselves but of the Universe; when we strain our eyes and see nothing but blackness.  In the Gorgias Socrates maintains, not only that it is always better to suffer injustice than to commit it, but that it is better to be punished for injustice than to escape, and better to die than to do wrong; and it is better not only because of the effect on others but for our own sake.  We are naturally led to ask what support a righteous man unjustly condemned could find, supposing he were about to be executed, if he had no faith in personal immortality and knew that his martyrdom could not have the least effect for good.  Imagine him, for example, shut up in a dungeon and about to be strangled in it and that not a single inquiry will be made about him—where will he look for help? what hope will compose him?  He may say that in a few hours he will be asleep, and that nothing will then be of any consequence to him, but that thought surely will hardly content him.  He may reflect that he at least prevents the evil which would be produced by his apostasy; and very frequently in life, when we abstain from doing wrong, we have to be satisfied with a negative result and with the simple absence (which nobody notices) of some direct mischief, although the abstention may cost more than positive well-doing.  This too, however, is but cold consolation when the cord is brought and the grave is already dug.

It must be admitted that Reason cannot give any answer.  Socrates, when his reasoning comes to an end, often permits himself to tell a story.  “My dialectic,” he seems to say, “is of no further use; but here is a tale for you,” and as he goes on with it we can see his satyr eyes gleam with an intensity which shows that he did not consider he was inventing a mere fable.  That was the way in which he taught theology.  Perhaps we may find that something less than logic and more than a dream may be of use to us.  We may figure to ourselves that this universe of souls is the manifold expression of the One, and that in this expression there is a purpose which gives importance to all the means of which it avails itself.  Apparent failure may therefore be a success, for the mind which has been developed into perfect virtue falls back into the One, having served (by its achievements) the end of its existence.  The potential in the One has become actual, has become real, and the One is the richer thereby.