And so, for this concluding chapter, as but a sort of focussing of what almost from the beginning has been borne in upon us, but especially at the close has been rich in reality and meaning, we have a sixth general fact, which may now be added to the original five. [p.252] _We believe through our doubts; we believe, not in something apart, but in the very things we doubt_. To this fact really inclusive of all the others, or if not to this fact at least to this conviction which we have achieved here, we shall now turn, and in our concluding chapter we may even forget, or retain only as the appropriate background, many of those more special or more technical details that from time to time have occupied us. After so much, that to some, if not to all, who have followed me to this place, may have appeared open to the charge of being mere theory, certain simple, very practical considerations, appealing quite as much to the emotions as to the reason, can hardly be out of place. Those who are already satisfied, who foresee only repetition, who are themselves without emotion, or who consider anything like the drawing of a moral to be as useless as it is inartistic, need read no further.
We believe in the very things we doubt. Doubt, this is to say, can destroy nothing. It only calls for closer scrutiny, for wider and deeper view, for greater achievement. Its effect is only to make over, renew, or fulfil what has already been and must ever remain an object of faith, and so doing it keeps the old faith alive. It questions all things, but properly, consistently it raises, not questions of mere existence or reality, but questions of meaning and worth, and whatever it truly questions it always quickens. Have [p.253] we not found that with its inborn and insatiable passion for truth doubt must believe in everything, and that to satisfy this passion, since all things must work together for what is real and true, it must reject nothing but seek even the universe in everything? All things, from the momentary sensation in your little finger, or the tree yonder on the lawn, to the personality of God or the divinity of Christ as an idea in the consciousness of millions of people, all things are; they are in experience; they are unassailable realities of experience; but--and just this is as far as the truth-loving doubter, the doubter who is honest with his own self-consciousness, can go--what really are they? _What are they?_ is such an honest question. In this question, too, there is more reality for the things inquired about even than in any man's assertion that they are this or that they are that. But the question _Are they?_ would be downright treachery. We doubters, then, believe, but would ever know what we believe; we have, yet would realize every possibility that what we have affords.