Skepticism

“ And as it seems to me that credulity is a less desirable frame of mind than skepticism, I have set forth this collection of witch stories as landmarks of the excesses to which a blind belief may hurry and impel humanity, and perhaps as some slight aids to that much misused common sense which the holders of impossible theories generally consider it well to tread under foot, and loftily ignore. ”

“ The deadly attacks of skepticism may, no doubt, be directed successfully enough against an unconditional science of reason, where its action or reaction, which brings out the intrinsic contradiction of such a system, is both salutary and desirable, in order to destroy the false semblance of a spurious necessity. All its blows, however, glance off from a real and solid experience, and soon cease entirely. ”

“ This skepticism expresses an indifference that we feel when we contemplate two opposing aims in such a way as momentarily to share them both. For the moment we realize equally these warring aims. They are ours. The conflict is in us. The two wills here represented are our will. And for this reason, and for this only, can we feel the skeptical indecision. Had we the will to choose the one end alone, we should unhesitatingly choose it, and should not see enough of the opposing will to be skeptics. ”

“ The ever widening effect of skepticism, which, whether masked under traditional forms or no, was from the beginning a spirit of complete negation and led at last to the questioning not only of any human institutions, but of the very forms of thought and of the mathematical truths. ”

“ And even skepticism must pause before the miracle of the continued existence of this strange people, wading through the ages, bearing on their shoulders the burden of their great trust, and pressing forward under the force of a perpetual and irresistible impulse. ”

“ Then for a time skepticism of all men's motives prevails, and we look around in vain for some one to trust. Sometimes in desperation all faith in human goodness is cast off, and the high resolves with which we had started to make it felt as a power for the accomplishment of some noble purpose are bitterly cast aside as a vain delusion. ”

“ Such facts show, too, that the sacred books of the world were not given for any such purpose as that to which so many men have endeavored to wrest them—the purpose served by compends of history and text-books of science.
Is skepticism feared? All history shows that the only skepticism which does permanent harm is skepticism as to the value and safety of truth as truth. No skepticism has proved so corrosive to religion, none so cancerous in the human brain and heart. ”

“ Powerful and aggressive as skepticism undoubtedly is, its mission is drawing to a close—a fact of which the skeptics themselves are wholly unconscious. We see the beginning of the end. The means are already being prepared by which the whole human mind, including all its most conservative and radical elements, shall be lifted into higher and purer light. Difficulties will be removed, obscurities explained, reconciliations effected, the skeptic silenced, and the Christian enlightened, when revelation is seen as a perfected whole, and not viewed in part. ”

“ If there is truth absolute, we desire to know the same, and if we ever get a glimpse of it, doubtless it will need very little apology from us. But meanwhile we propose to doubt fearlessly and thoroughly. If our limits prevent here the proper exhaustive search for all the actual difficulties of the views that we present, still we want to have, and as far as may be to show, the spirit of honest, determined, conscientious skepticism. ”

“ If the various arguments I have rehearsed indicate conclusively that in the laws of thought we have the norms of absolute truth—and skepticism on this point can be skepticism and not belief only by virtue of the very law which it doubts—some important corollaries present themselves. ”

“ Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had? ”

“ Let us conclude, then, that religious skepticism can be but the effect of a superficial examination of theological principles, which are in a perpetual contradiction of the clearest and best demonstrated principles! To doubt is to deliberate upon the judgment which we should pass. ”

“ What! do they not perceive that this pretension is nothing less than the pretension of demonstrating the human intelligence by the human intelligence, which has been, is, and will be eternally impossible? We believe skepticism forever invincible, because we regard skepticism as the final word of the reason concerning the reason itself. ”

“ The extraordinary turn is accordingly made that the factor the action of which breeds skepticism as to our possession of objective truth, viz., our will to power and exercise of it, is that about which skepticism is impossible; the very changing of things which it works, a change so complete that we hardly know whether any of the original lineaments of things are left, is a proof of its reality. ”

“ There are two kinds of Skepticism, experimental Skepticism and systematic Skepticism. Experimental Skepticism is the result of the incertitude which arises in men's minds from the spectacle of the infinite variety, discordance, and mobility of human opinions. Systematic Skepticism, on the other hand, challenges the power itself of the human understanding, and declares it incapable of knowing things in their essence—reality in itself. ”

“ Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepares the way for the faith of to-morrow.... ”

“ In barbaric and half-civilized countries, where superstition and despotism reign, there are no skeptics. The undeveloped reason lies impotent at the feet of a childish imagination. Skepticism is a necessary and salutary phase in the ordinary evolution of the mind. ”

“ Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married some one else? Skepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error—that is your faith-vetoer’s exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field. ”

“ Let us listen to the philosopher himself, who says, indeed, many good things, but does not show how they may tend to the overthrow of skepticism: "Skeptics are always repeating that things seem to them, but that they do not know what they really are. ”

“ Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. ”

“ What ought we to think of the minds of those who even here still scent the escape of a critical and transcendental skepticism, and who believe that they can doubt whether they really must know whereof they speak, and who hold this doubt to be the true philosophical enlightenment. ”

“ Their propounders, if they are honest to the core and also if they have the power to analyze their own mental processes in constructing such so-called proofs, feel, though they may not know it, that they are really reasoning against their own profounder convictions or seeking to convince themselves against their own intuitions. They vilipend skepticism because they hope thus to drown its still small voice in themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The traps and snares that are being set for the young and unwary the theological schools of our times are among the great evils of the century, and if we look not well to ourselves we shall be carried down to oblivion with the great destructive popular wave of skepticism. ”

“ Long ago this skepticism was refuted, and at all its points; long ago the unity of human truth was demonstrated, after having been admitted à priori in all ages by their leading minds. {352} This kind of skepticism is a theme upon which men will long continue to dilate; the darling subject for wits, it merits not to arrest the attention of philosophers. ”

“ Those who suppose they have found truth are called Dogmatists; those who think it incomprehensible are the Academics; those who still seek are the Skeptics. The attitude of Skepticism towards the knowable is summed up by Sextus Empiricus in the following words: "But the chief ground of Skepticism is that to every reason there is an opposite reason equivalent, which makes us forbear to dogmatize." ”

“ To have a solid foundation of skepticism,—that is to say, the faculty of changing at any moment, of turning back, of facing successively the metamorphoses of life. ”

“ The new truths, being found to be opposed to received opinions, cause a doubt concerning those opinions to arise in the mind. Skepticism, therefore, may easily follow, but does not precede inquiry.
Skepticism, being a negative principle, is necessarily unproductive and barren. ”

“ Men--under the very influence of skepticism--have come to accept almost any printed matter, almost any repeated name, as an authority infallible and to be admitted without question. They have come to regard the denial of such authority as a sort of insanity, or rather they have in most practical affairs, come to be divided into two groups: a small number of men, who know the truth, say, upon a political matter or some financial arrangement, or some unsolved problem ”

“ Flee from those who, under the pretense of explaining nature, sow desolating doctrines in the hearts of men, and whose apparent skepticism is a hundred times more affirmative and more dogmatic than the decided tone of their adversaries. ”

“ Although epistemically suspect claims may or may not themselves qualify as bullshit, the lack of skepticism that underlies the acceptance of epistemically suspect claims should also promote positive bullshit receptivity. ”

“ Skepticism, if by that we mean cautiousness, is the balance wheel of civilization. Most of the present acute troubles of the world arise out of taking on new ideas without first carefully investigating to discover if they are good ideas. ”

“ These men value themselves upon a perpetual skepticism, upon believing nothing but their own senses, upon calling for demonstration where it cannot possibly be obtained, and, sometimes, upon holding out against it, when it is laid before them ”

“ I never thought of it in that light before.” 2 Cor. iv. 3, 4, is very useful in showing the trifler that he is lost and that his skepticism arises from the fact that the “god of this world hath blinded his mind.” 2 Thes. ii. 10‒12, is useful in showing the origin of skepticism, “because they received not the love of the truth” and the consequences of skepticism—delusion and damnation. John viii. 21, 24, is also very searching in dealing with this class of skeptics, showing the terrible consequences of unbelief. ”

“ An ordinary mind that has had doubts, and has encountered and overcome them, or verified and found them the porters of the gates of truth, may be profoundly useful to any mind similarly assailed; but no knowledge of books, no amount of logic, no degree of acquaintance with the wisest conclusions of others, can enable a man who has not encountered skepticism in his own mind, to afford any essential help to those caught in the net. ”

“ They, too, have mistaken the real issue, and their justifiable skepticism regarding such facts as reading without the use of the eyes unduly biased their judgment in regard to the simpler and readily verifiable phenomena. ”

“ There were other influences that helped me down to unbelief. Negative criticism, pulling things to pieces with a view to find faults, to which our modern philosophers give the fine name of Analysis, tends to cause doubt about every thing. It eats out of one the very soul of truth, of love, and of faith. ”

“ For, skepticisms are not gratuitous or lawless, but are limitations of the affirmative statement, and the new philosophy must take them in, and make affirmations out-side of them, just as much as it must include the oldest beliefs. ”

“ It implies that a man is determined to look into matters for himself, not to trust every assertion, not to repeat a parrot creed; and so far as this determination is concerned, it is high and noble, and is in fact the very root and spring of all human knowledge; but who can wonder if looking should lead to doubting, and that so the name of sceptic should popularly imply, not the man who looks and believes, but the man who looks and doubts? And I am not ashamed to confess that I have much sympathy with this sceptical frame of mind. ”

“ It had long been felt by earnest and thoughtful persons, both Churchmen and Nonconformists, that some combined attempt ought to be made to meet in fair argument the scepticism and unbelief which for the last few years have been distinctly traceable in all classes of society. ”

“ And these faulty habits of thought and judgment, and the anti-Christian conclusions to which they lead, pass on from men of science to literary men; and literature is vitiated, and books and periodicals which should lead men to truth, cause them to err. Thus skeptical principles pervade society. They find advocates at times even among men who call themselves ministers of Christ. ”

“ We love, we cherish every sweet word of truth, but we value nothing apart from God, and Christ, and Religion.
28. It is a bad thing when people are taught things in their youth that are not true. They are sure, when they become students, if they are honest and able, to find out the errors, [Pg 293] and to lay them aside. And the mere habit of detecting and laying aside errors, has a tendency to make men skeptical. Now I had been taught a multitude of things in my youth that were not true, both with regard to the doctrines and the evidences of Christianity. ”