Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.

Forster’s metaphor treats “faith” less as a luminous spiritual insight than as something that firms and fixes the mind—like starch stiffening fabric. Read this way, faith can provide resolve and shape to a life, but it also risks rigidity: it may harden opinions, reduce suppleness, and discourage the open-ended curiosity Forster often valued. The phrase “to my mind” signals a personal, possibly skeptical stance rather than a universal definition, suggesting he is describing the psychological function of belief—how it braces people against uncertainty—more than endorsing any particular creed. The line captures an ambivalence: faith can steady, yet it can also constrain.