Do you like me or not?...Whether you do or not depends in countless instances, on whether I meet you halfway, am willing to assume that you must like me, and show you trust and expectation. The previous faith on my part in your liking's existence is in such cases what makes your liking come. But if sI stand aloof, and refuse to budge an inch until I have objective evidence, until you shall have done something apt...ten to one your liking never comes....The desire for a certain kind of truth here brings about that special truth's existence
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There are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming. And where faith in a fact can help create the fact, that would be an insane logic which should say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the 'lowest kind of immorality' into which a thinking can fall. Yet such is the logic by which our scientific absolutists pretend to regulate our lives!
William James, "The Will to Believe"
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