Credulity

“ I can fancy it may be a very happy state, and a little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly—better than always doubting and doubting and seeing difficulties and disagreeables in everything." ”

“ But this ministry, my lords, have only furnished a new instance of the credulity of mankind, of the delusion of outward appearances, and of the folly of hoping with too great ardour for any event, and of trusting any man with too great confidence. ”

“ Surely, with such faith, credulity ceases to be credulity. Where there is credulity without that living faith which sees the hand of God in everything, man's indignation is rightly roused. That credulity leads to self-conceit, hypocrisy, and unbelief. But such was not the credulity of Joinville or of his King, or of the Bishop who comforted the great master in theology. ”

“ His unconventionality would probably have some grounds to show for its conclusions; but for us, not insight, but the prestige of the opinions, is what makes the spark shoot from them and light up our sleeping magazines of faith. Our reason is quite satisfied, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand of us, if it can find a few arguments that will do to recite in case our credulity is criticised by some one else. ”

“ A single doubt is sufficient to render thee impious, and all the proofs of religion are too weak to make thee a believer. Thy mind hesitates to believe in a future state, and, in the mean time, thou livest as though there were none. The only foundation thou hast for thine opinion, is thine uncertainty, and thou reproachest to us, that faith is a vulgar credulity. ”

“ I have now sufficient reason to suspect, that, with all your splendid professions of wisdom, and seeming regard for truth, you have very little sincerity; that you either write what you do not think, and willingly impose upon mankind, or that you take no care to think right, but while you set up yourselves as guides, mislead your followers by credulity or negligence ”

“ Without credulity there could be no organization of society, no rituals, no ceremonials, no religions and customs,—but without the questioning spirit there could be no progress. Most of the men and women of this world have much credulity and only a feeble questioning tendency, but there are a few who from the start subject the answers given them to a rigid scrutiny and who test belief by results. ”

“ That credulity which leads to awe of the capable man, as a possessor of supernatural power, and which afterward, causing dread of his ghost, prompts fulfillment of his remembered injunctions—that credulity which initiates the religious control of a deified chief, reënforcing the control of his divine descendant—is a credulity which can not be dispensed with during early stages of integration. ”

“ And for that radical weakness of the human mind, credulity, there is no allowance made at all. That people see what they come prepared to see, and hear what they come prepared to hear, and believe what they come prepared to believe, is a truth as old as humanity. ”

“ Is it conceivable that the primitive peoples had the confidence-trick played on them? Or, again, is it the fact that credulity is less to-day than before? I feel sure that if our ancestors were brought to belief, it was by means which would equally carry conviction to the present generation. ”

“ We may now ask—and that is the point which most concerns us—how came this man, in spite of the most unfavorable appearances, to attract, to confirm, and to organize into a sort of faith, so vast an amount of human credulity? The answer must be that, in the first place, a large part of mankind, and that by no means of the lowest or least educated, wish to believe the improbable and prodigious. They are ready for any thing, because they really desire it. ”

“ They well knew how useful to their own views and interests it would be to persuade him that religion, virtue, and morality, were one and the same, or, at least, intimately and inseparably connected; the credulity of man gave credit to the imposture without examination, and the uniform experience of above 2,000 years has not hitherto been sufficient to undeceive him. ”

“ If the leaders of men, leaders of small companies and of large ones, those who are listened to and likewise listen to others, can be induced to absorb somewhat of the spirit and the sensitiveness to real distinctions that result from the successful devotion to the aims of science, the danger of the ready acceptance of false beliefs, the fostering of credulity, would be materially lessened. ”

“ To complete the collection of types of credulity, we should have an instance in which a system of interpretation of facts—not a mere narrative—in itself startling and contradictory to ordinary experience, gains widespread credence, and that in spite of pronounced inconsistency with verifiable observation and common sense. These conditions are remarkably well satisfied by the recent promulgation of the doctrines of Christian Science. Even in this field of intellectual effort the land of the free and the home of the brave has contributed an article worthy to compete with the foreign product. ”

“ Fourthly, the love of truth and appeal to reason, which are in the very grain of the scientific mind and heart, laugh at credulity. They do not scoff at authority, or reject it. But they say: “We must know. If we learn from you, we must know that you know. ”

“ Now, if any man should come, and without giving the least manner of reason for it (for there is no reason to be given against such assertions) , declare his disbelief of all these authentic, though strange accounts, can he with reason imagine that his incredulity shall pass for a token of wisdom? Shall his obstinacy confute the learned? Shall his want of faith be thought justly to give the lie to so many persons of the highest honour and quality, and of the most undoubted integrity? ”

“ Not until after the second century was there any such extravagant demand on human credulity. It originated, not among the higher ranks of Christian philosophers, but among the more fervid Fathers of the Church, whose own writings prove them to have been unlearned and uncritical persons. ”

“ I have remarked, in a former paper, that credulity is the common failing of unexperienced virtue; and that he who is spontaneously suspicious, may be justly charged with radical corruption; ”

“ The former type of credulity—the rash acceptance of facts—is the more simple and the more usually considered; the latter type—the rash acceptance of explanations of interpretations of facts—is frequently the more vital and instructive. Ingenious and successful lying is doubtless a fine art: yet the more difficult part of it is the gaining of credence for one’s inventions. That depends largely upon the belief-attitude of the public and upon the psychological climate in which they live. ”

“ In so far as this is accomplished there is developed a scientific-mindedness, a rationality and symmetry of judgment, which shall give to the conception of what is possible and what impossible, what probable and what improbable, what established and what disproved, a maximum of clearness, soundness, accuracy, and practicality. It is this habit of mind that makes one keen-scented for right beliefs and secure, not from error indeed, but from rash credulity. ”

“ When we come to think of it, we realise that most crimes have been made possible through some one’s credulity, or over-confidence, a credulity which, in the light of subsequent events, seems quite incomprehensible. ”

“ The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs. Habitual want of care about what I believe leads to habitual want of care in others about the truth of what is told to me. Men speak the truth to one another when each reveres the truth in his own mind and in the other's mind; but how shall my friend revere the truth in my mind when I myself am careless about it, when I believe things because I want to believe them, and because they are comforting and pleasant? ”

“ The natural course of the human mind is certainly from credulity to scepticism; ”

“ If it is a question of credulity, the Christian suspects that of all the different kinds of credulousness which the world has seen, nothing ever has surpassed the capacity of modern sceptics to accept impossible beliefs. ”

“ This taken for granted, let us see which of the two, namely, the believer or the unbeliever, makes the most prudent use of his reason. Submission to things held out to our belief, perhaps suspected of credulity, either on the side of the authority which proposes them; if it be light, it is weakness to give credit to them: or on the side of the things of which they wish to persuade us; if they be in opposition to the principles of equity, of honour, of society, and of conscience, it is ignorance to receive them as true: or, lastly, on the side of the motives which are employed to persuade us ”

“ A further feature also uniform in such cases, has been that a small element of truth may furnish a substructure for a considerable edifice of falsehood; human credulity being always an insatiable faculty, and its powers being unlimited when once the path of ordinary experience has been transcended. ”

“ He concludes that the efforts, in all ages, to answer the questions of origin and destiny, and to account for the phenomena of life, have all been substantial failures.
In the presence of demonstration there is no opportunity for the exercise of faith. Truth does not appeal to credulity—it appeals to evidence, to established facts, to the constitution of the mind. It endeavors to harmonize the new fact with all that we know, and to bring it within the circumference of human experience. ”

“ Whilst I was writing the preceding remarks, my attention was called by a friend to the following remarks in The Examiner, which seem to me so appropriate to this chapter and the preceding one, that I gladly quote them:—"If there is anything more striking than the thoughtless credulity with which men accept statements agreeing with their preconceptions, it is the stubborn incredulity with which they receive statements at variance with those preconceptions. ”

“ One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instruction as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. ”

“ Neither the logical requirements of philosophical thought nor the actualities of the practical life, when rightly interpreted, appear to be seriously antagonistic to—indeed are wholly compatible with—the absorption of the principles rooted in the scientific analysis of belief. This infusion of the blood of science permeates the organic structure of the belief-attitude, and creates a sturdy affinity for right belief and a deep-seated aversion for the intellectual manners that error, attractive to credulity, is apt to bear. ”

“ There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind. ”

“ Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages. ”

“ One hardly knows which is the more appalling: the abjectness of the credulity or the flippancy of the scepticism. ”

“ The crowning virtue becomes not conviction, nor the approval of authority, nor acceptability, nor general credence, but provability. The adoption of this as our sovereign method alters our ideals, even where it modifies but little our practices; it radically transforms our belief-attitude and our outlook, even tho we cannot as yet apply the one nor enter into possession of the other. ”

“ Unless doubt and questioning and inquiry on all subjects be utterly suppressed, the error of authority will be suspected, the means whereby a sounder belief may be discovered will be at least dimly realized, and some resort to other methods of shaping belief be attempted. ”

“ As touching the motives of credibility, which, preparing the mind to receive Faith, ought according to you to be not only certain by supreme and human certainty, but by supreme and absolute certainty, I will oppose Gabriel Biel to you, who pronounces that to receive Faith 'tis sufficient that the motives of credibility be proposed as probable. ”

“ Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not; and the agnostic “thou shalt not believe without coercive sensible evidence” is simply an expression (free to any one to make) of private personal appetite for evidence of a certain peculiar kind.
Now, when I speak of trusting our religious demands, just what do I mean by “trusting”? Is the word to carry with it license to define in detail an invisible world and to anathematize and excommunicate those whose trust is different? ”

“ The axiom of philosophers, that no human testimony can establish the credibility, of miracles, you have left unanswered. You say it has been confuted an hundred times: had you given the confutation of it, we would have been able to ascertain the truth of your assertion. You are writing for the multitude, and being a dignitary of the church, ought to furnish the people with arms to oppose reason. ”

“ But is this to do justice, either to themselves or to the religion? The rational way of treating a subject of such acknowledged importance is, to attend, in the first place, to the general and substantial truth of its principles, and to that alone. When we once feel a foundation; when we once perceive a ground of credibility in its history ”

“ We pledge ourselves to abstain from falsehood, in all its degrees. We promise not to create or encourage illusions as to what is possible, by what we say or write. We promise to one another active sincerity, which strives to see truth clearly, and which never fears to declare what it sees.
"We promise deliberate resistance to the tidal waves of fashion, to the 'booms' and panics of the public mind, to all the forms of weakness and of fear. ”