Doubter

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ But in implications about reality the doubter's consciousness differs from the believer's consciousness; not by any mere denial, for unqualified denial must be wholly alien to honest doubting, and the doubter is himself a believer, but by a peculiar assumption as to what the reality is. Simply doubter and believer, so far as they may be taken as independent characters, do not live in the same real world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Furthermore, for a being, call him doubter or thinker or what you will, whose very nature in deed and in word is awake to a sense of lack and is in consequence making a continued outcry: "Never this, but always something else, something fuller and realer, something including and using this, something maintained by the very conflicts of this,"—for such a being very plainly there never can be anything that is wholly and hopelessly beyond, that is not potentially and so actively real in him ”

“ 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. ”

“ But our ordinary ideas of causation would allow, or even require, an affirmative answer to every one of these questions.
Alas! Shall this labour proceed? Can we afford to continue it? The defence of the doubter is getting almost too successful; it is becoming too personal to be pleasant. The task of picking up the room of our ordinary life grows harder, not easier, as it moves forward. Every thing that we touch tells of a spirit of violence in our nature. ”

“ Doubt often separates an individual from the customary corporate life with which he has long identified himself, throwing him out of his church, or his party, or his society, or even his immediate family, but the doubter at once feels his loneliness, and gets a yearning, never realized before, for social relations. ”

“ If the doubter were brought into court under indictment for his offences against common sense, against ordinary experience and belief, and the jury of his peers sitting upon the case were composed, as of course it would be likely to be, of faithful believers chosen at random from the different walks of practical life, no better defence could possibly be offered than a simple statement of the incongruities which the consciousness of ordinary life is constantly addicted to. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Afford it or not, we simply can not help ourselves, for our self-confidence is already shattered; our attention to the disorder is already beyond our control; each one of us is the doubter we would defend. ”

“ Thus, for the distinct believer—that is to say, for the specifically dogmatic believer, for him who is, or who for the moment may be supposed to be, [p.195] tenaciously and immovably loyal to some specific body of doctrine and to some specific manner of life—reality is always tethered to some stake; while for the doubter it is too real and too free to suffer any such bondage, being infinite and all-inclusive. ”

“ Everywhere he supposes that the doubter is hardened, conceited, consciously shutting his eyes to the light—a fool who is to be answered according to his folly—that is, with ready replies made up of reckless assertions, of apocryphal anecdotes, and, where other resources fail, of vituperative imputation. ”

“ One is the opposite of the other, just as heaven and hell are opposites. Considering doubters more closely, we find that doubters believe; but they believe the opposite of what they should believe. Doubters believe the wrong thing. A doubter is one who could and ought to believe facts, but for some reason or other can not bring himself to do it. Instead, he believes another set of things, which appear to be facts but are not.
Let us illustrate faith and doubt. ”

“ Can we imagine any man seriously doubting whether...?
Here, according to 2., we ought to have 'that', since the writer evidently regards the doubt as absurd. But in the first sentence it is necessary for the force of the illustration that the deplorable condition of the doubter's mind should be vividly portrayed: accordingly, he is represented to us as actually handling the two alternatives. Similarly, in the second, we are invited to picture to ourselves, if we can, a hesitation so ludicrous in the writer's opinion. ”

“ In short, really the strongest reason for doubt is possibly a ground of belief; or, as was said in substance at the close of the foregoing chapter, the very experience of which we are already confirmed doubters is, after all, just the experience which we seem to see our way to believing in. ”

“ Yes, my brethren, were the punishment of doubters to be that of an indispensable obligation to seek the truth, no one would doubt; no one would purchase, at such a price, the pleasure of calling himself an unbeliever; few indeed would be capable of it; decisive proof that they do not doubt, and that they are as little attached to their doubts, as to religion (for their knowledge in both is much about the same) ; but only that they have lost those first feelings of discretion and of faith which left us still some vestige of respect for the religion of our fathers. ”

“ Some, for example, would fear more for the safety of the individual or the person than for that of society; and just in recognition of their fear, we honest doubters, who are now also at least potential believers, must look to our defences. ”

“ But doubt, which is thus social and imbued with a living sympathy, and which though requiring sacrifice does not destroy belief, but only makes belief active and reality an achievement, may be viewed here in still another way. It shows mankind using or spending [p.258] instead of either hoarding or throwing away any of the resources of knowledge and faith, of developed habit and personal association, which life accumulates. Some doubters, as men say in the business world, invest what they have ”

“ A hazy mistrust of all Scripture has been insinuated into the hearts and minds of countless millions, who in this way have been forced to become doubters,—yes, doubters in the Truth of Revelation itself. ”

“ And you believe that this is so with stubborn certainty. Yet underneath remains the hidden doubt that what it shows you as reality with such conviction it does not believe. It is itself alone that it condemns. It is within itself it sees the guilt. It is its own despair it sees in you.
Hear not its voice. The witnesses it sends to prove to you its evil is your own are false, and speak with certainty of what they do not know. Your faith in them is blind because you would not share the doubts their lord can not completely vanquish. You believe to doubt his vassals is to doubt yourself. ”

“ And a proof of what I advance is, that, in all other doubts, we hesitate only in order to be instructed; every thing is examined which can elucidate the concealed truth. But here the doubt is merely for doubting's sake; a proof that we are equally uninterested in the doubt as in the truth which conceals it from us; they would be very sorry were they under the necessity of clearing up either the falsity or the truth of uncertainties which they pretend to have on our mysteries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ I said.
"Do you doubt my word?" she asked.
"I doubt everything about you," I replied. "I doubted you from the first moment I saw you; now I doubt you terribly."
"And yet you are wrong," she said; "but some men cannot help being suspicious." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To follow a doubt or a lie or a by-way of conduct with the curiosity to see what comes of it in the end, is to prepare their own minds for similar lines of thought and action, and in the crises of life, when they have to choose for themselves, often unadvised and without time to deliberate, they are more likely to fall by the doubt or the lie or the spirit of revolt which has become familiar to them in thought and sympathy. ”

“ You are prejudiced when it comes to judging yourself. You compare your weakness with your friends' strength, and this comparison is unfair; it makes you lose confidence.
Doubt and Belief.
Nothing hurts one worse than doubting one's own ability, assets, and character. When you find yourself experiencing doubt, or inability, or hard luck, turn square around and say: "Begone, doubt; henceforth I have belief."
Say: "I have ability; I have pluck, and pluck means luck."
Always express confidence, faith, courage, and cheer thoughts, whether you feel them or not. ”