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ficance-altogether. But this "faith" is not a negation, but only an extension of reason. We accept the authority of a teacher or a scientific theory because, if necessary, we can verify the fact for ourselves; even so we can test the friendliness of a neighbour or the sanity of a cook. But religious "faith" appears to be of a different kind, not merely of degree.
Religious faith usually implies belief in a person, idea, or a theory of life, regarded as beyond proof and independent of reason. It is said to be a matter of the soul, not of human thought or understanding. Indeed, even modern Science cannot altogether deny the existence of the soul; and Psychology tells us that there are problems of consciousness-apart from any reference to spiritualism--which take us far beyond the regions of thought or understanding. If there are different organs in the human frame, and the senses, mind, and understanding perform different, though correlated, functions, why may we not regard faith as one of the characteristics of human consciousness or the soul ? If the mind can perceive, why not the soul ?-and there are many instances of persons, whose veracity it would be difficult to doubt, who are said to have seen God. This is the basic idea of Mysticism or soul-experience of God-and it cannot easily be shaken on grounds of logic or scientific theory.
But a new difficulty arises at once. We see that normal human beings are generally alike in respect of the
