Questioning

“ Questioning, when encouraged on any subject-matter, readily becomes a habit, and leads the mind to substitute exercises of inference for assent, whether simple or complex. Reasons for assenting suggest reasons for not assenting, and what were realities to our imagination, while our assent was simple, may become little more than notions, when we have attained to certitude. ”

“ The position which has been maintained is that the main purpose of questioning is to stimulate thought. Even if questions were mainly useful as a means of testing for facts, it would still be unwise to repeat the answers. ”

“ You have the same right to think, and judge, and decide for yourselves, as I have; and I feel too much affection for you to throw on the path of your inquiry the slightest shadow of opposition. I know you are virtuous; and if I see you happy, I shall be satisfied. You will proceed in your inquiries after truth with caution—weigh with the greatest nicety the evidence which may be submitted to you; as many opinions, when they first strike our attention, appear very specious and plausible, which will not endure the ordeal of a critical investigation. ”

“ The inquiry should be gone into as if it were merely the smelting process, by which the most secret and essential laws of cognition and of thought are to be extricated from the dross of ordinary opinion, and submitted to the attention of mankind. Viewed in this light, the importance of the discussion cannot be too highly estimated. The agitation of no other question can make known to us the fundamental laws of all knowledge—the binding necessities of all reason. ”

“ We may have known, in the course of our lives, a few people who, when we ask them a question, think before they answer. These are the people who habitually say to themselves, "In view of this question and of the truth which I should speak, what words should issue from my lips?" ”

“ But your hypotheses about particular problems must be judged by themselves. Your body of central truth is subject only to the test just mentioned. And you call this truth “absolute” merely because you conceive that it bears this test. Whether it does so is a question of fact, not of authority. And every man must, in such a matter, look for himself before judging about what is offered to him.
As to the principal special features of this discussion, they are: (1) The definition and comparison of what I have called the Four Historical Concepts of Being. ”

“ Your shrewd question has anticipated the subject, which even if you had said nothing must have arisen from our discourse, and therefore I do not doubt that it will be effectually grasped by your minds, since indeed your sharp wits have outstripped our instruction. For the puzzle of any question is easily removed, when the inquiry anticipates the answer, and is the first to travel along the road which it is to follow. ”

“ Do you believe, when you answer a question in the affirmative or the negative, that you are actually telling the truth? No, my friend, to be perfectly truthful one would need to lose oneself in a maze of explanation, such as no questioner would have the patience to listen to. ”

“ It is so far beyond all doubt and question that to ask what it must be is all the proof you need to show that you believe the contradiction that you know not what you cannot fail to know. Is this a question, or a statement which denies itself in statement? ”

“ If you will allow me to define a reasonable question as one which is asked in terms of ideas justified by previous experience, without itself contradicting that experience, then we may say, as the result of our investigation, that to every reasonable question there is an intelligible answer, which either we or posterity may know. ”

“ We must decide those questions as a matter of calm study and judgment in the light of human experience. It is the judgment that should tell us whether a thing is right or wrong. And how shall we know whether it is right or wrong? ”

“ It is not so easy to say what the people mean by their ordinary words, for this reason, that the question is not answered until it is asked; that asking is reflection, and that we reflect in general not to find the facts, but to prove our theories at the expense of them. ”

“ Here, on the threshold of the inquiry, an objection meets us. There are in the world a number of extremely worthy, well-meaning persons, whose judgments and opinions are entitled to the utmost respect on account of their sincerity, who are of opinion that vital [359] phenomena, and especially all questions relating to the origin of vital phenomena, are questions quite apart from the ordinary run of inquiry, and are, by their very nature, placed out of our reach. ”

“ Every question, every controversy, theory, view, or supposition which arises, he subjects to the same test. It is another merit of the book that every question is submitted to common-sense argumentation. ”

“ All the terms and the relations which a judgment contains depend on the knowledge we have by acquaintance—that is to say, we are ultimately dependent on our actual experience for all knowledge whatever, whether it is acquaintance or description, for we can only describe in terms with which we are acquainted; but in the judgment these elements are combined into new objects, or a certain relation is declared to exist between objects, and it is this combination of the elements of the judgment that involves its truth or falsehood. ”

“ Each day I believe less and less in the social question, and in the political question, and in the æsthetic question, and in the moral question, and in the religious question, and in all the other questions that people have invented in order that they shall not have to face resolutely the only real question that exists—the human question, which is mine, yours, his, everyone’s. ”

“ In this inquiry, perhaps clearer evidence may be discovered, and firmer persuasion attained; for it is commonly easier to know what is wrong than what is right; to find what we should avoid, than what we should pursue. ”

“ Thus, then, a judgment, an opinion, if it means anything concrete, is always an appeal to more or less accessible human experience--and is not, as I have been asserting, an appeal to an overarching higher insight. When you make any significant assertion, you appeal to whatever concrete human observations, experiments, or other findings of data, actual or possible, can furnish the test that the opinion calls for. ”

“ There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it. ”

“ Our understanding, confounded and amazed at so many statements, some of them learned, others absurd and all incomprehensible, remains in uncertainty and doubt. One only reflection has struck us: on reviewing so many prodigious facts, so many contradictory assertions, we ask ourselves: What are all these discussions to us? ”

“ The very attitude of any questioner illustrates this truth. To question is to be active, to express an interest; and so it is to seek, as the relative fulfilment of one present purpose, a state of mind which also involves the dissatisfaction and instability of viewing something as still unknown and foreign. ”

“ If you answer to a question, stating with great seeming earnestness, viewing the question of importance in the mind of him who states it, you would not only expect, but you might really need to be informed what effect your reply was allowed to have in the mind of your opponent. ”

“ In other words, we must analyze every statement which is the result of reasoning, or a statement of opinion, and see what objections, if any, can be brought against it, and then convince ourselves where the truth lies and why. ”

“ They guess at the wishes of the person who asks them, and answer according to his, and not according to their own, opinion. But as we know that you are good judges, and will say exactly what you think, we have taken you into our counsels. ”

“ The questions which this gentleman asked me, and similar kinds of questions, are being asked over and over again by people all over the country. The question can be answered only by our putting our consciences into our work, and by our being entirely unselfish in it. ”

“ In dealing with social difficulties, the value of a cultivated judgment, able to unravel entangled evidence, and to give due weight to a great variety of conflicting considerations, would seem to be obvious enough. ”

“ Such questions, which lie at the very threshold of the temple of inquiry, show us how hard is our task of getting below our labels, our names of things, and pursuing investigation more than a single remove from appearance. ”

“ Before you begin to practice, clear your mind of all doubts. Fight and reason and argue; and when you have established it in your mind that this and this alone can be the truth and nothing else, do not argue any more; close your mouth. Hear not argumentation, neither argue yourself. ”

“ Useful in the discussion of a controversy, in the demonstration of a theory, in the uncertainties of a commentary, it possessed more than any other the authority needful to lay down, without discussion, the value of a doctrine. ”

“ The answer, I think, is, that the interrogative faculty being usually occupied with questions which admit of rational answers, we acquire a sort of intellectual habit of presupposing every wherefore to have a therefore, and thus, when eventually we arrive at the last of all possible wherefores, which itself supplies the basis of all possible therefores, we fail at first to recognise the exceptional character of our position. ”

“ Let us therefore make an humble attempt, with all due candor and discretion, to enter upon the inquiry before us with an unflinching determination to push our investigations beyond all reasonable doubt, and never rest satisfied till we have conquered all conquerable obstacles, and come into the possession of the light and liberty of truth. ”

“ If they 466were candid, if they were disinterested, if they were not hostilely disposed, it might be a feasible scheme to consider a debate as an amicable communication of doubts and lights, as a comparison of strength or a confession of weakness: but why hint a doubt, or start a difficulty needlessly in your own path, which will be eagerly caught at, and made use of in the most insulting manner to defeat a host of real proofs, and overturn the most legitimate conclusions? ”

“ You then are able to turn back upon him his own argument. It is a psychological fact that the force of a statement made in answer to an interrogative objection, is much stronger than would be the same statement made without the question or objection. ”

“ These proofs, and this exhortation, carry such light and force in them, as may be reasonably expected to have an effect upon all men: yet to the WISE, who are prompted by their curiosity, to habits of inquiry, to ask a reason of the hope that is in us10, and who are qualified by their parts and studies to judge of such reason, we are instructed to address a more elaborate answer, or apology. ”

“ To those who would preserve themselves from the influence of such, the first great inquiry, respecting their own mental impressions, ought to be,—are they facts,—and on what evidence do they rest which can satisfy a sound understanding that they are so. ”

“ Why any man, judge or no judge, who wished to prepare an argument on one side of a question should think fit to cast that argument for convenience' sake in the form of a judicial summing-up of both sides is, and must remain, a puzzle. ”

“ A look of inquiry converts an assertion into a question, and fully seems to make the difference between ‘The master is come,’ and ‘Is the master come?’ The interrogative pronouns ‘Who?’ ‘What?’ are made by looking or pointing about in an inquiring manner ”

“ Ere we come to this important enquiry, it behooves us to see that we come with willing minds; that we say not, ‘so far will we go and no farther; we will make one step, but not two; we will examine, but only so long as the result of our examination shall confirm our preconceived opinions.’ In our search after truth, we must equally discard presumption and fear. ”

“ And they show their importance sometimes in a remarkable and embarrassing way, when, after a long debate, their presence at the bottom of everything, unnoticed and perhaps unallowed for, is at length disclosed by some obvious and decisive question, which some person had been too careless to think of, and another too shy to ask. ”

“ Every step in scientific investigation, every proposition which relates to the interest and happiness of man, every statement and appeal involving a valuable consideration, must be submitted to the scrutiny and judgment of individual reason; for every person has the right to form his own conclusions, and justify them by experience. ”

“ One can but answer such questions in the most fragmentary and tentative way, relying for the most part on the opinions and information of those who know, those who are in the van of action, at home and abroad, but also on one's own personal impressions of an incomparable scene. ”

“ In the eristic or sophistic debate the puzzle of the respondent is, in what language to enunciate his propositions so as to keep clear of the subtle objections which will be brought against him by the questioner.132 It is these pungent arguments that most effectually stimulate the mind to investigation. The most pungent of all is, where the syllogistic premisses are highly probable, yet where they nevertheless negative a conclusion which is also highly probable. ”

“ Briefly this, I think. In mundane matters, where the personal equation dominates, their judgment is apt to be turbid and perverse; but as one rises into questions of pure intelligence, it becomes serenely impartial. ”

“ Necessarily men carry with them into sociological inquiries, the modes of observation and reasoning which they have been accustomed to in other inquiries—those of them, at least, who make any inquiries worthy to be so called. ”