Note † — Chapter XXXV · Poetry and Beliefs

Human speech is indeed the witness, and to what else does it not witness? It would be strange if in a matter of such moment as this the greatest of all emotive words did not come into play. “In religion we believe that God is Beauty and Life, that God is Truth and Light, that God is Goodness and Love, and that because he is all these they are all one, and the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity is to be worshipped.”† No one who can interpret emotive language, who can avoid the temptation to illicit belief so constantly presented by it need find such utterances ‘meaningless.’ But the wrong approach is easy and far too often pressingly invited by the speakers, labouring themselves under misconceptions. To excite a serious and reverent attitude is one thing. To set forth an explanation is another. To confuse the two and mistake the incitement of an attitude for a statement of fact is a practice which should be discouraged. For intellectual dishonesty is an evil which is the more dangerous the more it is hedged about with emotional sanctities. And after all there is another explanation, which would long ago have been quietly established to the world’s great good had men been less ready to sacrifice the integrity of their thought and feeling for the sake of a local and limited advantage.