I found this jewel as a part of William James studies:

The Will to Believe

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This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. (April 2009)

I have brought with me tonight [...] an essay in justification of faith, a defense of our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters, in spite of the fact that our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced. 'The Will to Believe,' accordingly, is the title of my paper.

—William James, The Will to Believe, Introduction

"The Will to Believe" is a lecture by William James, first published in 1896,^[1] which defends, in certain cases, the adoption of a belief without prior evidence of its truth. In particular, James is concerned in this lecture about defending the rationality of religious faith even lacking sufficient evidence of religious truth.
James' central argument in "The Will to Believe" hinges on the idea that access to the evidence for whether or not certain beliefs are true depends crucially upon first adopting those beliefs without evidence. As an example, James argues that it can be rational to have unsupported faith in one's own ability to accomplish tasks that require confidence. Importantly, James points out that this is the case even for pursuing scientific inquiry. James then argues that like belief in one's own ability to accomplish a difficult task, religious faith can also be rational even if one at the time lacks evidence for the truth of one's religious belief.

end quote from Wikipedia under the heading "The Will To Believe"

This sort of thing I believe can be best understood by the following example understandable by both religious or spiritual people as well as agnostics and atheists:

"You cannot lift up your arm unless you first believe you can. You cannot get up and walk or run unless you first believe you can. You cannot drive a car or even learn to drive a car unless you believe you can. You cannot fly a plane unless you believe you can. You cannot go to college and become a lawyer, doctor or dentist or whatever unless you believe you can."

Everything we do is an act of belief and of confidence in some way whether or not that comes from religious or spiritual beliefs, hypnotic affects of friends, colleagues or parents or relatives, mentors or whoever or whatever. Without belief you cannot get up and even eat food and then you will likely die unless someone else who believes they can feed you does.