"...Suppose there are signs of the existence of a hitherto undiscovered planet. He at once follows up the clue, not with a mere wish to know the truth in the abstract, but with a very strong wish to find more clues, and ultimately to find convincing reasons for believing that the planet exists. His love of truth is directed to a hope for discovery in this particular matter. This it is which stimulates his efforts. And this is, as I say, the wish to believe if reasonable belief is possible—a wish for conviction that what seems probable is true. The only reason why the wish to believe has ever been opposed to the wish for truth is because it is so frequently an insincere wish—a wish to maintain or hold a thing, and not the wish to know it to be true—that we are unaccustomed to think of it in this latter aspect. It is in reality the concrete form which the abstract wish for truth constantly takes."
Wilfrid Philip Ward, "The Wish to Believe", Witnesses to the Unseen, and Other Essays, p. 268. Walton, the character speaking, soon after amends 'wish for truth' to 'wish for knowledge' in the hope that it will be less misleading.
