FAITH, the state of mind which treats a certain proposition as true, independently of whether its truth is completely demonstrated. Faith thus partakes of the nature of will. Its most extreme form is found in the famous passage of Tertullian which ends, "Buried, He was raised from the dead; this is certain be cause it is impossible." While faith rarely goes to such extremes as this, it is of its vety nature that even if its object is proved it totally disregards this proof.
Faith is not entirely confined to religious matters. It is inherent in the very nature of knowledge. The general form of all descrip tive knowledge is the analysis of a situation. Thus the physicist analyzes his gross physical processes m terms of atoms or electrons, the psychologist reduces everything to atomic men tal states, and so on throughout the sciences. Now, one of the most striking features of analysis is that up to the present, at any rate, it has rarely if ever been exhaustive. In the first place to record all the significant featttres of a situation is beyond the powers of the htunan mind. The total condition of a physical experiment includes every single event in the universe in exactly the unique temporal and spatial relations which it bears toward the ex periment in question. But furthermore, the ultimate terms of analysis are continually re ceding. The physicist of yesterday thought in terms of atoms; the physicist of to-day thinks in terms of electrons; and what the terms of the physicist of to-morrow will be we cannot imagine. For these reasons an analysis is al most of necessity incotnplete. From the stand point of a strict yes or no logic, an incomplete analysis is a false analysis. However, the slightest application of a scientific law demands that we should act as if this analysis, which is probably false, and which at the best is not Imown to be true, were a demonstrated fact. At the very least, it demands that we should trust in the negligible character of the errors of the law, although nothing but our trust in the continuity of nature guarantees that these are negligible. This trust in the continuity of nature conforms in every respect to the defini tion of faith.
Analysis is not confined to matters of phy sics and the other natural sciences. A moral situation is susceptible to analysis, and indeed demands analysis before a reasonable course of action can ensue. In determining what to do when our motives lead us in opposite di rections, we analyze the many bearings and con sequences of our conduct. This analysis which precedes the appeal to conscience is imperfect for exactly the same reasons as those which render our physical analysis imperfect: the complete bearing and consequences of. our deeds are never at our disposal. Again it re
quires an act of faith to treat the results of our incomplete analysis as a basis for conduct and to be confident that just those aspects of the deed which we have overlooked do not give it its dominant moral tone.
Faith is thus the necessary concomitant of analysis both in natural science and in conduct. Analysis makes the scope of faith recede further and further beyond any assignable limit, but the importance of faith remains just what it was in the beginning. To render this faith firm, especially in those matters that con cern the moral conduct, has always been the task of religion. By allegory, by the emotional appeal of rite, mythology and creed, religion furnishes a scaffolding for the faith of those who cannot put an independent trust in the continuity of nature and the moral order itself. Just as Descartes and the Occasionalists founded their physics on the honesty of a God guaranteed by faith as well as by demonstra tion, the exponents of religion have always made some Divine dictum or example their chief moral sanction. Thus Paley based his en tire ethics on a system uf divinely established rewards and punislunents. It h interesting to note that these religious attempts to mediate between faith and analysis leave the need for faith essentially unchanged, as is shown by the emphasis placed on faith by all religious teachers. What religion accomplishes is the transference of the need for faith to objects more easily grasped than abstractions by those of a mystical trend of mind. There are many non-mystical natures, however, to which it is more natural and simple to have faith directly in the continuities and laws of nature and morals rather than in those things worshiped by the religious, and in these the most vigorous faith is consistent with the entire absence of anything that can be called a religion.
In theistic religions faith naturally acquires as its principal meaning belief in existence of God and in certain dogmas concerning Him. The Jewish faith was primarily a faith in the moral order as personified in Jehovah. The Christian finds the embodiment of his moral order and accordingly the object of his faith in Christ the Redeemer as well as in the Jew ish God. The Catholic definition of faith has been paraphrased by Cardinal Newman as °be lief in certain doctrines because God has re vealed them.* This faith is especially directed toward the Church and toward certain official dicta of the Church. The various Protestant sects differ as to their definition of faith, but all emphasize reliance in God. See BELIEF. Consult Harnack, 'History of Dogma' (Bos ton 1894-99); Inge, 'Faith and its F'sychology' (London 1909) ; James, 'The Will to Believe' (New York 1911).
Noasztrr WIENER.