In thus meeting the world the soul without experience shows a fine courage proportionate to its own vigour. We may well imagine that lions and porpoises have a more masculine assurance that God is on their side than ever visits the breast of antelope or jelly-fish.
 George Santayana, The Life of Reason (1905). copy citation

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Author George Santayana
Source The Life of Reason
Topic self-assurance courage
Date 1905
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15000/15000-h/15000-h.htm

Context

“This attitude, where it concerns religion, involves two corollaries: first, what in accordance with Hebrew precedent may be called symbolically faith in God, that is, confidence in one's own impulse and destiny, a confidence which the world in the end is sure to reward; and second, abomination of all contrary religious tenets and practices—of asceticism, for instance, because it denies the will; of idolatry and myth, because they render divinity concrete rather than relative to inner cravings and essentially responsive; finally of tradition and institutional authority, because these likewise jeopardise the soul's experimental development as, in profound isolation, she wrestles with reality and with her own inspiration.
and of courage.
In thus meeting the world the soul without experience shows a fine courage proportionate to its own vigour. We may well imagine that lions and porpoises have a more masculine assurance that God is on their side than ever visits the breast of antelope or jelly-fish. This assurance, when put to the test in adventurous living, becomes in a strong and high-bred creature a refusal to be defeated, a gallant determination to hold the last ditch and hope for the best in spite of appearances.” source