Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition

CHAPTER 4 - WE AGNOSTICS

we not believe in our own reasoning? Did we not
have confidence in our ability to think? What was
that but a sort of faith? Yes, we had been faithful,
abjectly faithful to the God of Reason. So, in one way
or another, we discovered that faith had been in-
volved all the time!

We found, too, that we had been worshippers.
What a state of mental goose-flesh that used to bring
on! Had we not variously worshipped people, senti-
ment, things, money, and ourselves? And then, with
a better motive, had we not worshipfully beheld the
sunset, the sea, or a flower? Who of us had not loved
something or somebody? How much did these feel-
ings, these loves, these worships, have to do with pure
reason? Little or nothing, we saw at last. Were not
these things the tissue out of which our lives were
constructed? Did not these feelings, after all, deter-
mine the course of our existence? It was impossible to
say we had no capacity for faith, or love, or worship.
In one form or another we had been living by faith
and little else.

Imagine life without faith! Were nothing left but
pure reason, it wouldn't be life. But we believed in
life—of course we did. We could not prove life in the
sense that you can prove a straight line is the shortest
distance between two points, yet, there it was. Could
we still say the whole thing was nothing but a mass of
electrons, created out of nothing, meaning nothing,
whirling on to a destiny of nothingness? Of course we
couldn't. The electrons themselves seemed more in-
telligent than that. At least, so the chemist said.

Hence, we saw that reason isn't everything. Neither
is reason, as most of us use it, entirely dependable,