ineffectual, and I cannot contemplate an ineffectual life patiently. I
am by my nature impelled to refuse that. I assert that it is not so. I
assert therefore that I am important in a scheme, that we are all
important in that scheme, that the wheel-smashed frog in the road and
the fly drowning in the milk are important and correlated with me. What
the scheme as a whole is I do not know; with my limited mind I cannot
know. There I become a Mystic. I use the word scheme because it is the
best word available, but I strain it in using it. I do not wish to imply
a schemer, but only order and co-ordination as distinguished from
haphazard. "All this is important, all this is profoundly significant."
I say it of the universe as a child that has not learnt to read might
say it of a parchment agreement. I cannot read the universe, but I can
believe that this is so.

And this unfounded and arbitrary declaration of the ultimate rightness
and significance of things I call the Act of Faith. It is my fundamental
religious confession. It is a voluntary and deliberate determination to
believe, a choice made.


2.2. ON USING THE NAME OF GOD.

You may say if you will that this scheme I talk about, this something
that gives importance and correlation and significance, is what is meant
by God. You may embark upon a logical wrangle here with me if you have
failed to master what I have hitherto said about the meaning of words.
If a Scheme, you will say, then there must be a Schemer.

But, I repeat, I am using scheme and importance and significance here
only in a spirit of analogy because I can find no better words, and I