Not so much because the facts believed-in are of such intense moment, but rather because the belief itself, whether true or false, is so consoling and helpful, that there seems to them a danger of self-deception just proportioned to their wish to believe.
He put his arm about her as they descended the stairs together, and at the foot they paused. "Dear little sister!" he said caressingly. Her eyes filled at his unusual tenderness; for Hubert's love, however fervent and well believed-in, was not demonstrative. She looked up in his face with a long, serious question. He answered it by asking: "Shall I go? for Him, Winnie?"
Yet a little after, and the whole east glowed with gold and scarlet, and the hollow of heaven was filled with the daylight. The isle the undiscovered, the scarce believed-in now lay before them and close aboard; and Herrick thought that never in his dreams had he beheld anything more strange and delicate.
How comes it, then, that our critics so uniformly accuse us of subjectivism, of denying the reality's existence? It comes, I think, from the necessary predominance of subjective language in our analysis. However independent and elective realities may be, we can talk about them, in framing our accounts of truth, only as so many objects believed-in.
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