He asked himself, what were they? Ah! that was a difficult matter;
there were so many, and the rules which governed them were sometimes
so subtle that mistakes always had and always would be made; it was
just this that made it impossible to reduce life to an exact
science. There was a rough-and-ready, rule-of-thumb test of truth, and
a number of rules as regards exceptions which could be mastered
without much trouble, yet there was a residue of cases in which
decision was difficult- so difficult that a man had better follow
his instinct than attempt to decide them by any process of reasoning.
Instinct then is the ultimate court of appeal. And what is instinct?
It is a mode of faith in the evidence of things not actually seen. And
so my hero returned almost to the point from which he had started
originally, namely, that the just shall live by faith.
And this is what the just -that is to say reasonable people- do as
regards those daily affairs of life which most concern them. They
settle smaller matters by the exercise of their own deliberation. More
important ones, such as the cure of their own bodies and the bodies of
those whom they love, the investment of their money, the extrication
of their affairs from any serious mess- these things they generally
entrust to others of whose capacity they know little save from general
report; they act therefore on the strength of faith, not of knowledge.
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