The foundations of belief

Introduction

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Except for three or four explanatory notes and a few verbal corrections, the body of the following essay remains what it was in the preceding editions. But I have added a summary of the argument, and transferred to an appendix two chapters which are somewhat parenthetical in character. I propose now to say a few words by way of introduction, in the hope of preventing some of the misconceptions to which experience has shown this presentation of my views to be peculiarly liable.

I am far from thinking that these misconceptions are mainly due to the carelessness of the reader. Surveying the work after an interval of years, with a rested eye, I perceive in it certain peculiarities or, if it be preferred, errors of construction, which may well leave the reader more impressed — favourably or unfavourably — by particular arguments and episodes than by the ordered sequence of the whole. A wellknown theologian (who, by the way, has himself completely failed to catch my general drift) observed

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in a review, which he has since republished, that the book is redeemed by its digressions ; ^ and though I cannot be expected gratefully to accept so dubious a compliment, I admit that the interest of certain branches of the subject has occasionally betrayed me into giving them a relative prominence which the bare necessities of the general argument hardly seem to justify. Examples in point are the aesthetic discussion in the second chapter of Part I., and the chapter on Authority in Part III.

I have made no attempt to correct this fault, if fault it be. Had I done so the book would, no doubt, have been a good deal altered, but I doubt whether it would on the whole have been altered for the better. It might have gained in proportion and balance ; but it would, perhaps, have lost whatever freshness and spontaneity it may ever have possessed. I have, therefore, contented myself with providing, in the argumentative summary mentioned above, a corrective to the too detailed treatment of certain portions of the work, hoping that by thus unsparingly thinning out the trees I shall enable the most careless wayfarer to understand without difficulty the general lie of the wood. I desire, however, emphatically to express a (perhaps not unbiassed) opinion that the book is something more than the expansion of its sum mary, and that no extract or essence

^ Catholicism, Roman and Anglican, by Principal Fairbairn, p. 384.

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can really reproduce the qualities of the original preparation — whatever those qualities may be worth.

To turn now from the form of the essay to its substance. The objection which seems most readily to suggest itself to my critics, is that the whole argument is a long endeavour to find in doubt the foundation of belief, to justify an excess of credulity by an excess of scepticism. If all creeds, whether scientific or theological (it is thus I am supposed to argue), are equally irrational, all may be equally accepted. If there is no reason for believing anything, and yet something must in fact be believed, let that something be what we like rather than what we dislike. If constructive reason is demonstrably barren, why should we be ashamed to find contentment in prejudice ?

I am not concerned to defend a theory which, whatever be its merits, is by no means the one which the following essay is intended to advocate. But it may be worth while to dwell for a moment on the causes to which this misconception of the argument is probably due. The first of these, though by much the least important, is, I imagine, to be found in the avowedly tentative character of the scheme of thought I have endeavoured to expound. This scheme certainly claims, rightly or wrongly, to be philosophical, but it does not claim to constitute a philosophy ; nor do I for a moment desire to enter into the humblest competition with the great archi-

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tects of metaphysical systems. The world owes much to these remarkable men, but it does not owe them as yet a generally accepted theory of the knowable ; nor can I perceive any satisfactory indication that we are on the high-road to such a measure of agreement, either about the method of philosophy or its results, as has prevailed for two centuries in the case of science. Kant was of opinion that * metaphysic, notwithstanding its high pretension, had' (up to the publication of the ' Critique of Pure Reason ' ) ' been wandering round and round the same point without gaining a step.' If Kant's criterion of progress, namely, universal and permanent approval, is to be as rigorously applied to the period subsequent to 178 1 as he applied it to the preceding twenty centuries, I fear that in t/zts respect the publication of his masterpiece can hardly be said to open a new philosophic epoch. But without fully accepting this pessimistic view, it is surely permitted to those who do not feel themselves able either to frame a fresh system of philosophy or to acknowledge the jurisdiction of any old one, candidly to confess the fact, without thereby laying themselves open to the charge of being dangerous sceptics masquerading for some sinister purpose as defenders of the faith ! No doubt this unambitious procedure has its difficulties. It carries with it, as an almost inevitable corollary, the admission, not only that the provisional theory advocated is incomplete, but that to a certain

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extent its various parts are not entirely coherent. For if our ideal philosophy is, as I think it ought to be, a system of thought co-extensive with the knowable and the real, whose various elements are shown not only to be consistent, but to be interdependent, then it seems highly probable that anything short of this would not only be incomplete, but to a certain extent obscure and contradictory. It does not seem likely, nay, it seems almost impossible, that our knowledge of what is only a fragment could be exact knowledge even of that fragment. Divorced from the context which it explains, and by which it is itself explained, it must surely present incongruities and mysteries incapable of complete solution. To know^ in part must not merely be to know something less than the whole, but to know that something loosely and imperfectly.

Now this modest estimate of the present reach of speculation may, no doubt, be contrasted with two others, both of which seem at first sight more in harmony with the dignity of reason. That dignity is, of course, not impaired by a mere admission of ignorance. It is on all hands allowed that by far the largest portion of the knowable is yet unknown, and, so far as mankind on this planet are concerned, is likely to remain so. But our ignorance and our correlative knowledge may be pictured in more than one way. We might, for example, conceive ourselves as in possession of a general outline of the knowable, xii INTRODUCTION TO

though ignorant of its details — as understanding in a broad but thoroughly consistent fashion the mutual relation of its principal provinces, though minutely acquainted with but a small corner of one of them. We should in that case be like geographers who had determined by an accurate triangulation the position of a few high mountain peaks dominating some vast continent, while avowedly unable to explore its interior, to penetrate its forests, or navigate its streams. Their knowledge would thus be small ; yet in a certain sense it would cover the ground, it would be thoroughly coherent, and neither the progress of thought nor accumulating discoveries, however they might fill up its outlines, could seriously modify them.

Something not much less than this has from time to time been claimed for the great metaphysical and theological systems by their disciples, perhaps even by their founders. And though I cannot persuade myself that we have as yet reached anything like this breadth and sureness of vision, it is not with those who think otherwise that my main controversy has to be fought out. The vital issue lies rather with those (in this book termed Naturalists) who map out the world of knowledge in a very different fashion. Unlike the metaphysicians, they glory in the limitations of their system. The narrower range of their vision is, they think, amply redeemed by its superior certitude. They admit, or rather proclaim,

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that the area of reality open to their investigation is small compared with that over which Metaphysics or Theology profess to range. But though small, it is admittedly accessible ; such surveys as have already been made of it are allowed on all hands to be trustworthy ; and it yields up its treasures of knowledge to methods of exploration which, valid though they be, can never, from the nature of the case, be employed in searching out the secrets of the surrounding solitudes.

It is, I imagine, by those whose philosophy conforms to this type, who are naturalistic rather than metaphysical, that the charge against the following essay of misusing sceptical methods is principally urged. And this is what might have been expected. Scepticism in the field of Theology or Metaphysic is too common to excite remark. Believers in Naturalism are sceptical about all theology and all metaphysics. Theologians and Metaphysicians are sceptical about all theology and all metaphysics but their own. The one subject which sceptical criticism usually spares is the one subject against which, in this essay, it is directed, namely, the current beliefs about the world of phenomena. No wonder therefore that those to whom beliefs of this character represent the sum of all actual and all possible knowledge find ground of suspicion against this method of conducting controversy. No wonder they suggest that freedom of thought when thus employed is in

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some danger of degenerating into licence ; that at the best it is useless, and may easily become harmful.

Objections like these compel us to enquire into the legitimate uses of sceptical or destructive criticism. That it has its uses is denied by none. To hasten the final disintegration of dying superstition would be one, I suppose, universally approved of. But there will be less agreement about its value when applied, as it is applied in the following pages, to beliefs which are neither dead nor likely to die. Everybody is gratified by the refutation of theories from which they differ ; but they are apt to receive with impatience any criticism of statements on the truth of which (it may be) both they and the critic are agreed. Such questionings of the unquestionable are judged not only to be superfluous, but to be of dubious expediency — disquieting yet unproductive, a profitless display of more or less ingenious argumentation.

Now, it may readily be acknowledged that philosophic scepticism which neither carries with it, nor is intended to carry with it, any practical doubt, finds its chief uses within the region of pure speculation. There it may be a valuable measure of the success which speculative effort has already attained, a needful corrective of its exaggerated pretensions. It is at once a spur to philosophic curiosity and a touchstone of philosophic work. But even outside the sphere of pure speculation this sceptical criticism has its uses — humbler, no doubt, yet not without

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their value. Though it provides no material out of which a creed can be formed, it may yet give a muchneeded warning that the apparent stability of some very solid-looking beliefs cannot be shown to extend to their foundations. It may thus most wholesomely disturb a certain kind of intellectual dogmatism, which is often a real hindrance to free speculation, and so prepare the ground for constructive labours, to which directly it contributes nothing.

This is the use to which I have endeavoured to put it; and surely not without ample justification. How many persons are there who acquiesce in the limitations of the Naturalistic creed, not because it appeals to them as adequate — responsive and satisfying to their whole nature — but because loyalty to reason seems to require their acceptance of it, and to require their acceptance of nothing else ? * Positive knowledge ' they are taught to believe is really knowledge, and is the only knowledge. All else is but phantasie, unverified and unverifiable — speculative ore, unminted by experience, which each man may arbitrarily assess at his own valuation, which no man can force into general circulation. Naturalism, on the other hand, provides them with a system of beliefs which, with all its limitations, is in their judgment rational, self-consistent, sure. It may not give them all they ask ; but what it promises it gives ; and what it gives may be accepted in all security.

Now critical scepticism is the leading remedy

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indicated for this mood of dogmatic serenity. If it does nothing else, it should destroy the illusion that Naturalism is a creed in which mankind may find intellectual repose. It suggests the question whether, after all, there is, from the point of view of disinterested reason, this profound distinction between the beliefs which Naturalism accepts and those which it rejects, and, if not, whether it can be legitimate to suppose that the so-called ' conflict between religion and science' touches more than the fringe of the deeper problems with which we are really confronted in our endeavour to comprehend the world in which we live.

I have no doubt myself how this question should be answered. In spite of the importunate clamour which this 'conflict' has so often occasioned since the revival of learning, drowning at times even the domestic quarrelling of the Churches, the issues decided have, after all, been but secondary and unessential. It is true, no doubt, that high ecclesiastical authorities have seen fit from time to time to denounce the teaching of astronomy, or geology, or morphology, or anthropology, or historical criticism. It is also true that in the long run science is seen to be justified of all her children. But do not on this account let us fall into the vulgar error of supposing that these skirmishings decide, or help to decide, the great cause which is in debate between naturalism and religion. It is not so. The difficulties and ob-

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scurities which beset the attempt to fuse into a coherent whole the living beliefs of men are not to be found on one side only of the line dividing religion from science. Naturalism is not the goal towards which we are being driven by the intellectual endeavour of the ages; nor is anything gained either for philosophy or science by attempting to minimise its deficiencies.

Some may think that in the following pages I have preached from this text with too persistent an iteration. At any rate, I seem to have given certain of my critics the impression that the principal, if not the sole, object of this work was to show that our beliefs concerning the material world and those concerning the spiritual world are equally povertystricken in the matter of philosophic proof, equally embarrassed by philosophic difficulties. This, however, is not so ; and if any think that by over-emphasis I have given just occasion for the suspicion, let them remember how deeply rooted is the prejudice that had to be combated, how persistently it troubles the conscience of the religious, how blatantly it triumphs in the popular literature of infidelity.

But, of course, the dissipation of a prejudice, however fundamental, can at best be but an indirect contribution to the work of philosophic construction. Concede the full claims of the argument just referred to, it yet amounts to no more than this — that while it is irrational to adopt the procedure of

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Naturalism, and elevate scientific methods and conclusions into the test and measure of universal truth, it is not necessarily irrational for those who accept the general methods and conclusions of science, to accept also ethical and theological beliefs which cannot be reached by these methods, and which, it may be, harmonise but imperfectly with these conclusions. This is indeed no unimportant result: yet if the argument stopped here it might not be untrue, though it would assuredly be misleading, to say that the following essay only contributed to belief in one department of thought, by suggesting doubt in another. But the argument does not stop here. The most important part has still to be noted — that in which an endeavour is made to show that science, ethics, and (in its degree) aesthetics, are severally and collectively more intelligible, better fitted to form parts of a rational and coherent whole, when they are framed in a theological setting, than when they are framed in one which is purely naturalistic.

The method of proof depends essentially upon the principle that for a creed to be truly consistent, there must exist a correspondence between the account it gives of the origin of its beliefs and the estimate it entertains of their value ; in other words, there must be a harmony between the accepted value of results and the accepted theory of causes. This compressed, and somewhat forbidding, formula will receive ample

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illustration in succeeding chapters, but even here it may perhaps be expanded and elucidated with advantage.

What, then, is meant by the phrase ' an accepted value ' in (say) the case of scientific beliefs ; and how can this be out of * harmony with their origin ' ? The chief ' accepted value,' the only one which we need here consider, is truth. And what the formula asserts is that no creed is really harmonious which sets this high value on truth, or on true beliefs, and at the same time holds a theory as to the ultimate origin of beliefs which suggests their falsity. If, underlying the rational apparatus by which scientific beliefs are formally justified, there is a wholly non-rational machinery by which they are in fact produced, if we are of opinion that in the last resort our stock of convictions is determined by the blind interaction of natural forces and, so far as we know, by these alone, then there is a discord between one portion of our scheme of thought and another, between our estimate of values and our theory of origins, which may properly be described as inconsistency.

Again, if in the sphere of aesthetics we try to combine the * accepted value ' of some great work of art or some moving aspect of Nature, with a theory which traces our feeling for the beautiful to a blind accident or an irresponsible freak of fashion, a like collision between our estimate of worth and our

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theory of origins must inevitably occur. The emotions stirred in us by loveliness or grandeur wither in the climate produced by such a doctrine, and the message they seem to bring us — not, as we would fain hope, of less import because it is inarticulate — becomes meaningless or trivial.

A precisely parallel argument may be applied with even greater force in the sphere of ethics. The ordinarily * accepted value ' of the moral law, of moral sentiments, of responsibility, of repentance, self-sacrifice, and high resolve, clashes hopelessly with any doctrine of origins which should trace the pedigree of ethics through the long-drawn developments produced by natural selection, till it be finally lost in some material, and therefore non-moral, beginning. In this case, as in the other two, we can only reach a consistency (relative, indeed, and imperfect at the best) if we assume behind, or immanent in, the chain of causes cognisable by science, a universal Spirit shaping them to a foreseen end.

The line of argument thus indicated is the exact opposite of one with which we are all very familiar. We are often told — and it may be properly told — that this or that statement is true, this or that practice laudable, because it comes to us with a Divine sanction, or because it is in accordance with Nature. In the argument on which I am insisting the movement of thought is reversed. Starting from the conception that knowledge is indeed real, that

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the moral law does indeed possess authority, it travels towards the conviction that the source from which they spring can itself be neither irrational nor unmoral. In the one case we infer validity from origin : in the other, origin from validity.

It is of course evident that in strictness the ' validity ' from which * origin ' is thus inferred, is not so much the absolute validity of even the most widely accepted conclusion, as the valid tendency of the general processes out of which these conclusions have arisen. To base our views of the universe on the finality and adequacy of particular scientific and ethical propositions or groups of propositions, might well be considered hazardous. Not only is the secular movement of thought constantly requiring of us to restate our beliefs, but as I have shown in a later portion of this volume, even in those cases where no restatement is necessary, this is not because the beliefs to be expressed remain unchanged, but because our mode of expressing them is elastic. No such admission, however, really touches the essence of the argument. It is enough for my purpose to establish that we cannot plausibly assume a truthward tendency in the belief-forming processes, a growing approximation to verity in their results, unless we are prepared to go further, and to rest that hypothesis itself on a theistic and spiritual foundation.

On the argument thus barely and imperfectly

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outlined two further observations may perhaps be made. The first is that, like every other appeal to consistency, it is essentially an argumentum ad hominem. It can only affect the man who ' accepts ' both the * estimate of value * and the * theory of origin.* On him who is unmoved by beauty, or who regards morality and moral sentiments as no more than a device for the preservation of society or the continuation of the race, neither the aesthetic nor the ethic branch of the argument can have any hold or purchase. For him, again, if any such there be, whose agnosticism requires him to cut down his creed to the bare acceptance of a perceiving Self and a perceived series of subjective states, there can be no conflict between the theory of origins and the accepted value of the consequent beliefs, since by hypothesis he neither has, nor could have, any theory of origins at all. He lives in a world of shadows related to each other only as events succeeding each other in time ; a world in which there is no room for contradiction as there is no room for anything that deserves to be called knowledge. The man who makes profession of such doctrines may justly be suspected of lying, but he is not open, in this connexion at least, to any charge of philosophic inconsistency.

It may in the second place be worth noting that the preceding argument is both suggested by the modern theory of universal development, and is

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(as I think) its necessary philosophic complement. Before this general point of view was reached, the interest taken in the causes which produced beliefs as distinguished from the reasons which also justify them, was confined to particular cases, and suggested as a rule by a controversial or historical motive. This or that doctrine was inspired {i.e. immediately caused) by God, and therefore it was true ; by the Devil, and therefore it was false : was due to the teaching of a power-loving priesthood ; was unconsciously suggested by ^elf-interested motives; was born of parental influence or the subtle power of social surroundings — such and such like comments have always been sufficiently common. But until the theory of evolution began to govern our reconstruction of the past, observations like these were but detached and episodical notes. They represented no generalised or universal view as to the genesis of human opinions. To regard all beliefs whatever, be they true or false, our own or other people's, as having a natural history as well as a logical or philosophical status; to see them not merely as conclusions, but as effects, conditioned, like all other effects, by a succession of causes stretching back into an illimitable past; to recognise the fact that, so far as induction and observation can inform us, only a fraction of these causes, and those not the most fundamental, can be described as rational — all this is new. New also (at least in degree) is it to realise

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that the beginnings of morality are lost among the self-preserving and race-prolonging instincts which we share with the animal creation ; that religion in its higher forms is a development of infantine, and often brutal, superstitions ; that in the pedigree of the noblest and most subtle of our emotions are to be discovered primitive strains of coarsest quality.

But though these truths are now admitted as truths of anthropology, I do not think their full philosophical consequences have yet been properly worked out. Their true bearing on the theory of scientific belief seems scarcely to have been recognised. In the domain of religious speculations there are many who suppose that to explain the natural genesis of some belief or observance, to trace its growth from a lower to a higher form in different races and widely separated countries, is in some way to throw it into discredit. In the sphere of Ethics a like suspicion has perhaps prompted the various attempts to construct ' intuitive ' systems of morals which shall owe nothing to historical development and psychological causation. I cannot believe that this is philosophically to be defended. Nothing, and least of all what most we value, has come to us ready made from Heaven. Yet if we are still to value it, the modern conception of its natural growth requires us more than ever to believe that from Heaven in the last resort it comes.

There is one more point on which I desire to throw

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light before bringing this Introduction to a close, one other class of objector whom, if possible, I should wish to conciliate. To these critics it may seem that, whatever be the value of the argumentative scheme herein set forth, it does not even pretend to give them that for which they have been looking. Compared with the philosophy of which they dream, it appears mere tinkering. It not only suffers, on its own confession, from rents and gaps, imperfect cohesion, unsolved antinomies, but it is infected by the vice inherent in all apologetics — the vice of foregone conclusions. It travels towards a predestined end. Not content simply to follow reason where reason freely leads, it endeavours to cajole it into uttering oracles about the universe which shall do no violence to what are conceived to be the moral and emotional needs of man: a course which may be rational, but the rationality of which should (they think) be proved, but ought by no means to be assumed.

Now a criticism like this raises a most important question, which, in its full generality, does not perhaps receive all the attention it deserves. Since belief necessarily precedes the theory of belief, what is the proper relation which theory in the making should bear to beliefs already made ? It may at first seem that any serious attempt to devise a philosophy should be preceded not merely by a suspension of judgment as to the truth of all pre-philosophic assumptions, but by their complete elimination

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as factors in the enquiry. From the nature of the case, they can as yet be no more than guesses, and in the eyes of philosophy a mere guess is as if it were not. The examination into what we ought to believe should therefore be wholly unaffected by what we do in fact believe. The seeker after truth should set forth on his speculative voyage neither commit* ted to a predetermined course nor bound for any port of predilection, and it,should seem to him a far smaller evil to lie stagnant and becalmed in universal doubt than to move towards the most attractive goal on any impulse but that of strictly disinterested reason.

The policy is an attractive one ; but its immediate consequence would be a total and absolute sundering of theory and practice. In so far as he was theorist, the philosopher acting on these principles would, or should, regard himself as discredited if he believed anything which was not either self-evident or rationally involved in that which was self-evident. In so far as he was a citizen of the world, he could not live ten minutes without acting on some principle which still waits in vain for rational proof ; and he would do so, be it observed, although (on his own principles) there is no probability whatever that when he has reached the philosophic theory of which he is in quest, it will be in any kind of agreement with his pre-philosophic practice. If such a probability exists, it should evidently have guided him in his

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investigations, and there would be at once an end of the ' clean slate and disinterested reason.*

For myself indeed I doubt whether this method is possible, or, if possible, likely to be fruitful. And I am fortified in this conviction by the reflection that those to whose constructive suggestions the world owes most have favoured a different procedure. They have not thus speculated in the void. In their search for a world-theory wherein they might find repose, they have been guided by some pre-conceived ideal, borrowed in its main outlines from the thought of their age, to which by excisions, modifications, or additions, they have sought to give definiteness and a rational consistency. I do not, of course, suggest that they were advocates speaking from a brief, or that their conclusions were explicitly formulated before their arguments were devised. My meaning rather is that we must think of them as working over, and shaping afresh, a body of doctrine (empirical, ethical, metaphysical, or metaphysico-theological, as the case may be), which in the main ihty found, but did not make ; that, judged by their practice, they have not regarded ' disinterested reason ' as the proper instrument of philosophic construction; nor have they in fact disdained to struggle towards foreseen and wished for conclusions.