Benefit of the doubt

“ So, just as we have the various applied sciences, in this essay there is offered an applied philosophy of doubt, a philosophy that would show doubt to have a real part in effective action, and that with the showing would make both the doubting and the acting so much the more effective. ”

“ Now in these definite limits, both for the exclusion of absolute skepticism and for the recognition and correct application at all times of a genuine and salutary doubt, we have, we think, found a satisfactory answer to the great question of truth and of the possibility of man’s attaining to a knowledge of it. And if so, we have at the same time shown completely that doubt forms a decisive crisis in the human mind, and thereby happily solved the problem which at an earlier period we propounded with regard to it. ”

“ For our doubter, at once fully self-conscious and honest, no possible experience can ever be in itself real and final, nor, on the other hand, can any possible experience ever be altogether unreal and illusory. His reality, I say, must be at once free and all-inclusive. ”

“ What has doubt, what has investigation, done concerning the universe of which we are a part? In the old days, before doubt began its work, before men asked questions and demanded proof, we lived in a little, petty, tiny world, which the imagination of the superstitious and the fear of ignorant men had created. ”

“ How do you know that you really exist? Here you are at the end of doubt, and here a still, small voice cries to you, 'I, I am, for I think, I doubt my being; I, the thought, the doubt within me, I exist, even if all around me disappear in illusion and shadow.' Begin with doubt and you can stop at no arbitrary resting-place. ”

“ Have you worked at some problem of everyday life, or a problem of science or philosophy, patiently or impatiently applying all the rules and precepts at your command, trying every resort known to you, and in final desperation many you only guess at, and then, when failure seems almost certain, caught a glimpse of the real meaning and the real way, attaining to an insight that reveals a new world to you? That, too, is doubt rewarded. ”

“ But, alas! when one is possessed by stubborn doubt, everything that tends to destroy that doubt irritates you beyond measure, and appears to be dictated by perfidy and falsehood; you persist all the more in your conviction, because you believe you would be tricked if you gave it up. The most undeniable truths become adroit lies, and the noblest and most sudden inspirations become so many snares deliberately set for you. ”

“ But let me now put the result, so far secured, of our confession of doubt in a new way. For a life in which every thing has an opposite, every idea a counter-idea, truth very plainly, as has indeed been frequently said, cannot be a specific consciousness nor reality a fixed thing. Truth is not a creed, but a spirit. Reality is not a thing, but a life. And for being a spirit truth is only the more realistic? For being a life, reality is only the more substantial. ”

“ Our doubts may once more find hope in the reflection that the faults of experience may balance themselves, but we have no occasion to abandon our doubting as idle or meaningless. Contradictions that balance each other, errors that are mutually corrective, are still contradictions, are still errors. ”

“ The knower is made also a doubter, and the doubter appears as having, in a sense, forgotten, without for a moment betraying, the constant doubting within him. If I may so speak, he has, even while he lacks; such is the condition of his seeking; such is the way in which doubting is necessary to real living. Doubt saves from the possession that makes "inert, lazy, proud," yet does not take away. Doubt makes experience always deep, even putting consciousness in touch with reality, and it makes life for ever living. ”

“ Have you ever thought that to accuse one of a certain wrong act may be just the way to suggest to him the possibility of committing it? If one trusts you implicitly, that very trust is a constant suggestion to be true, and doubt is a suggestion to act worthy of being doubted. ”

“ So are faith and doubt as close to each other, as inseparable, as whole and part, as person and class, and with this conclusion we seem to have won for the doubter the right to say confidently: "My doubts cannot destroy me; I am; even in me there dwells the power that makes for reality; even in me, in spite of the very defects that the conditions of my social life impose, there lives the spirit of truth. Nay, even the social life itself, when mine as well as social, is also real and true." ”

“ He that to what he sees adds observation, and to what he reads, reflection, is in the right road to knowledge, provided that in scrutinizing the hearts of others he neglects not his own. Be not dismayed at doubts, for remember that doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom; therefore, when we are in doubt and puzzle out the truth by our own exertions, we have gained a something which will stay by us and serve us again. ”

“ But always his doubting, as he knows it, as he is honest with it, is an appeal, not merely to nature as physically a powerful agent in the life he is pursuing, nor to others like himself who, by sharing, [p.027] may lighten his distress and enhance his final victory, but also to a full, inclusive experience; to a life, perhaps like his own, yet indeterminately deeper than any he has known ”

“ Any truth is better than indefinite doubt. ”

“ To a real life, then, doubt, as an evidence of challenge and resistance, is absolutely necessary, and appreciation of just this necessity is certainly an important part of our present confession, and the confession is important, because it is sure somewhat to brighten what heretofore may have seemed a dark horizon. Confession often changes night to dawn, and here the association of doubt with real living, with a world in which there is always something to do, awakens emotions that such words as relativity, and instability, and change, and even game, have discouraged, or even wholly suppressed. ”

“ Also, if anybody is amazed to hear mention of facts about doubt, as if doubt should not somehow submit to its own nostrum, let him merely reflect that, strangely enough, nothing is quite so indubitable as doubt, nothing so convincing as the reasons for doubt. Let me not be too subtle, but to doubt doubt is only to affirm it, and somehow—whether for good or ill need not now be said—all the negative things of life possess a peculiar certainty, and are all most easily proved. ”

“ We are all universal doubters; doubt underlies all consciousness; even habit has gloomy doubt, as Horace would say, sitting up behind; like pain or want, like ignorance or contradiction, doubt is a dynamic principle, making experience deeper and ever deepening, and life real and alive; and fifthly: As man is dependent and feels dependent, he is a doubter. His widespread, or rather his universal, sense of dependence begets doubt. Witness the fact that doubt shows man a seeker after company; the company of nature, the company of his fellows, the company of God. ”

“ But with the advent of the doubter's view of life absolutism and its appropriate other-worldism melted away like snow beneath a noonday sun, and upon their going self-denial ceased to be the cardinal virtue and the chief ground of an approving self-consciousness. ”

“ Have we not been led to suspect that somehow, without loss of their reality and validity, the most cogent reasons for doubt, even the contradictions in our views of things, might turn into bases of belief, that an experience essentially paradoxical may not be as hopeless as at first sight it may appear, that in all the madness there is at least a chance of some method? The view of science, however, must be examined before our attention can be turned definitely upon such a possibility. ”

“ So, although grossly misused if directly courted, this defect of experience has its place, even its ideal value, in experience, and what on the surface seemed an almost if not quite hopeless reason for doubt, has truly become all but transfigured, seeming now a source of real assurance. With Heraclitus of old, only perhaps seeing even more than he saw, we can glory in a world of strife. Doubting all things, we can yet believe that all things work together for what is real, for what is good. ”

“ Alike in ordinary life and in science, even in science where such a result was perhaps hardly to be expected, we found what at least seemed like illusion and what certainly was paradox, and almost against our will we had to conclude that a spirit of contradiction and duplicity and vacillation dwelt at the very centre and the very heart of our human experience. ”

“ People talk so much about the beauty of confidence. They seem to entirely ignore the much more subtle beauty of doubt. To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die. ”

“ Doubt is necessary to life, to real life, to deep experience. Doubt is but one of the phases of the resistance which a real life demands. Real life implies a constant challenge, and doubt is a form under which the challenge finds expression. ”

“ The doubter's world is a world in which, as we journey, we shall discover four features that are especially noteworthy and that accord fully with the principles of Descartes as well as with the findings of our own confession of doubt. ”

“ In spite of all the pride of reason and philosophy, a vague doubt will still lurk in the mind, and perhaps will never be perfectly eradicated; as it is concerning a matter that does not admit of positive demonstration. ”

“ And one sees, too, some of the blight which doubt produces, although the blight is by no means all that one sees. There is heat everywhere in the physical world, but not necessarily only arson or even destructive fire. Morals, however, social life, industry, politics, religion, have suffered somewhat—and many would insist very seriously—from the prevailing doubt. Moreover, if the outward view shows doubt everywhere, the inward view is at least not more reassuring. Who can examine his own consciousness without finding doubt at work there? ”

“ Now, there are five things, some of them already foreseen, that seem worth saying here of the essential habit of self-contradiction, and they seem worth saying because so effectively and so comprehensively they warrant the conclusion that even upon our strongest reason for doubt we may rest a genuine case for belief. ”

“ The sceptic, then, the universal doubter, is born only with, and what is more he cannot be born without, a real [p.199] interest and constant faith in truth, in true knowledge and right action, but no special experience can ever compass the length and the breadth, the depth and the height of this interest or this faith. He has a native love for truth and righteousness, a belief in them, as real and as inviolable, as universal and as necessary, as his doubt ”

“ But for doubt, which strangles the very beginning of things, initiative instead of being so rare would be a common virtue among all classes. Nine out of ten average individuals are held back from testing their powers by the suggestions of doubt. If it were possible to drive from the human mind this specter which stands at the door of our hopes, of our resolution, which throws its baleful shadow across our vision, civilization would forge ahead by leaps and bounds. ”

“ And yet, although we have indeed found man spending at least his waking hours in a room that seems disorder incarnate, and although before the court of practical life the doubter seems thus to have been thoroughly justified, while his too hasty judges are in turn condemned, nevertheless the case for doubt is not of such a character as to leave absolutely no hope for belief. ”

“ Wherefore, if this be in truth the effect of correspondence, in our doubter's world mind appears as a thinking, not a mere knowing, and matter as a moving, not a mere being; and the thinking and the motion are instrumental, or mediative, to the same end, to the same reality. All of which, moreover, being translated, means, on the one hand, that in our doubter's world man is free to think to some practical purpose, and, on the other hand, that the material world will serve both his thinking and his purpose. ”

“ To doubt is just to join the opposition, and the opposition is made up of heretics and agents generally of mere destruction. To treat doubt as real and positively significant, as having any true worth in human experience, as being even a proper object of will, is to stop permanently, not the wheels of commerce and industry, but the wheels of the present life in all its phases. In a word, perhaps one of the words of the hour, Christian Science has not wished to be more inhospitable to the reality of disease than have these believers to the reality and usefulness of doubt. ”

“ In a former chapter, it will be readily recalled, an impulse to social life was found to be intimately connected with the attitude of doubt, and here clearly we are confronted with only another view of the same fact, since contradiction has become our most cogent reason for doubt and is now seen to require the social relations. ”

“ The feeling of doubt is, as a psychological phenomenon, essentially distinct from the feeling of belief which, in its objective aspect, correlates with certainty or matter of fact; as well as from the feeling of disbelief, the correlate of which can only be described negatively. Every man knows these feelings by his own mental experience. ”

“ And here, similarly, belief within doubt, not belief apart from doubt, or validity and reality only in a contradictory experience, not aloof from a contradictory experience, is the sum and substance of what our confession has certainly been leading towards.
Nothing, it is indeed true, so blasts a man's assurance as to have his ideas and arguments on a certain matter, or on matters in general, exposed as defective, and worst of all as positively inconsistent, and with his discomfiture human nature must always entertain the warmest kind of sympathy. ”