No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters

by Ursula K. Le Guin

It does a necessary job. It explains things that needed explaining. It leads the mind on into new realms of factual discovery and theoretical imagination. Darwin’s theory vastly enlarges our perception of reality—our always tentative knowledge. As far as we have tested it and can test it, and always subject to modification as we learn more, we can accept it as true knowledge—a great, rich, beautiful insight. Not a revealed truth, but an earned one. In the realm of the spirit, it appears that we can’t earn knowledge. We can only accept it as a gift: the gift of belief. Belief is a great word, and a believed truth too can be great and beautiful. It matters very greatly what one believes in. I wish we could stop using the word belief in matters of fact, leaving it where it belongs, in matters of religious faith and secular hope. I believe we’d avoid a lot of unnecessary pain if we did so.