But believes in what? In whatever it may be that envelopes it in what we, in our human language, call space, earth, sunlight, and motion in the throbbing possibility of putting forth something which we call leaves, for which that patient soul has no name and no image.”1ĭr. “The vegetative soul”, Santayana wrote, “enjoys … Christian blessedness: it sees not, yet it believes. Flowers and grass perfectly embody this kind of faith. Acting successfully requires believing in a real world where actions find their intended objects, and those objects, altering course as a result, yield the desired consequences. We sense an environment continuous with our bodies, and that deeply felt relation is charged with the urgency of incipient action. This idea that belief unmediated by vision is deeper and more profound than belief of the sort that flows from observation captures the basic orientation of living organisms. To the apostle who doubted, Jesus replied: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”.
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