Part 1

THE WILL TO DOUBT

AN ESSAY IN PHILOSOPHY FOR THE

GENERAL THINKER

ALFRED H. LLOYD

Truth hath neither visible form nor body; it is without habitation or name; like the Son of Man it hath not where to lay its head.

LONDON

SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., Lim.

25 HIGH STREET, BLOOMSBURY, W.C.

1907

PREFACE.

The chapters that follow comprise what might be called an introduction to philosophy, but such a description of them would probably be misleading, for they are addressed quite as much to the general reader, or rather to the general thinker, as to the prospective student of technical philosophy. They are the attempt of a University teacher of philosophy to meet what is a real emergency of the day, namely, the doubt that is appearing in so many departments of life, that is affecting so many people, and that is fraught with so many dangers, and in attempting this they would also at least help to bridge the chasm between academic sophistication and practical life, self-consciousness and positive activity. With peculiar truth at the present time the University can justify itself only by serving real life, and it can serve real life, not merely by bringing its pure science down to, or up to, the health and the industrial pursuits of the people, but also by explaining, which is even to say by applying, as science is "applied," or by animating the general scepticism of the time.

That this scepticism is often charged to the peculiar training of the University hardly needs to be said, but except for its making such an undertaking as the present essay only the more appropriate the charge itself is strangely humorous. One might also accuse the University of making atoms and germs, or, by its magic theories, of generating electricity or disease. Scepticism is a world-wide, life-wide fact; even like heat or electricity, it is a natural force or agent--unless forsooth one must exclude all the attitudes of mind from what in the fullest and deepest sense is natural; scepticism, in short, is a real phase of whatever is real, and its explanation is an academic responsibility. Its explanation, however, like the explanation of everything real or natural, can be complete only when, as already suggested here, its application and animation have been achieved, or when it has been shown to be properly and effectively an object of will. 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.

But it may be said that effective acting depends, not on doubt, but rather on belief, on confidence or "credit." This will prove to be true, excepting in what it denies. To be commonplace, to write down here and now what is at once the truism and the paradox of this book, a vital, practical belief must always live by doubting. Was it Schopenhauer who declared that man walks only by saving himself at every step from a fall? The meaning of this book is much the same, although no pessimism is either intended or necessarily implied in such a declaration. Doubt is no mere negative of belief; rather it is a very vital part of belief, it has a place in the believer's experience and volition; the doubters in society, be they trained at the University or not, and those practical creatures in society who have kept the faith, who believe and who do, are naturally and deeply in sympathy. And this essay seeks to deepen their natural sympathy.

Here, then, is my simple thesis. Doubt is essential to real belief. Perhaps this means that all vital problems are bound in a real life to be perennial, and certainly it cannot mean that in its support I may be expected by my readers to give a solution of every special problem that might be raised, an answer to every question about knowledge or morality, about religion or politics or industry, that might be asked. Problems and questions, of course the natural children, not of doubt, but of doubt and belief, may be as worthy and as practical as solutions. Some of them may be even better put than answered. But be this as it may, the present essay must be taken for what it is, not for something else. It is, then, for reasons not less practical than theoretical, an attempt to face and, so far as may be, to solve the very general problem of doubt itself, or say simply--if this be simple--the problem of whatever in general is problematic; and, this done, to suggest what may be the right attitude for doubters and believers towards each other and towards life and the world which is life's natural sphere; emphatically it is not the announcement of a programme for life in any of its departments.

The substance of chapters I., II., III., IV., and V. in small parts, and VI. and VIII. was given during the summer of 1903 in lectures before the Glenmore School of the Culture Sciences at Hurricane in the Adirondacks, and except for some revision chapters V. and VII. have already been published--Science, July 5, 1902, and the journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, June, 1905.

To Professor Muirhead, the Editor of the Ethical Library, I wish here to express my hearty appreciation of his interest and assistance in the final preparation of this volume for publication.

A. H. L.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, U.S.A.

CONTENTS.

I. Introduction II. The Confession of Doubt III. Difficulties in the Ordinary View of Things IV. The View of Science: its Rise and Consequent Character V. The View of Science: its Peculiar Limitations i. Science would be Objective ii. Science would be Specialistic iii. Science would be Agnostic VI. Possible Value in these Essential Defects of Experience VII. The Personal and the Social, the Vital and the Formal in Experience VIII. An Early Modern Doubter IX. The Doubter's World i. Reality, without Finality, in all Things ii. Perfect Sympathy between the Spiritual and the Material iii. A Genuine Individuality iv. Immortality X. Doubt and Belief Index

THE WILL TO DOUBT.

INTRODUCTION.

Without undue sensationalism it may be said that this is an age of doubt. Wherever one looks in journeying through the different departments of life one sees doubt. 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? We would often hide it from others, not to say from ourselves, but it is there, and we all know it to be there. Other times may also have been times of doubt, but our day, as the time to which we certainly owe our first and chief [p.002] duty, is very conspicuously and very seriously a time of doubt.

Now there are some, and they are many, who would decry the discussion of such a thing as doubt, for they see only danger ahead. Doubt they compare with death or disease, and to dwell upon any of these is idle, unnatural, morbid. Why not let such things alone, and look only to what is pleasant, to what is good and true and beautiful? Then, too, doubt, the confession of doubt, is the royal entrance to philosophy and the risk of an entanglement with philosophy, which seems to them the source of much that is harmful, the essence of all that is impractical, is altogether too great. Doubt for them is even less to be played with than fire, with which already it has been compared here. Again, as others in matters political and industrial, so they in matters intellectual and spiritual resent anything that appears likely in any way to disturb the standing credit of the country. 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.

Yet all who feel in this way are short-sighted. Their contentions, like those of their cousins, perhaps [p.003] their country cousins, the Christian Scientists, may have worth for being corrective, but at very best they are only one-sided. In a fable, never in real life, a man might get the smell of burning wood in his house and refuse to recognize the danger because of the inevitable delay to his business which the alarm of fire would involve; but doubt is not less real nor less dangerous, nor even less capable, when under control, of useful applications. Any danger, too, squarely faced is at least half met. Why, then, be so impracticable, so like characters in fables, as to overlook or turn one's back upon the doubt of the day, refusing it a place and a part in real life? The negative things of life can be so only relatively. Death itself cannot possibly be absolute, and doubt, not unlike death, indeed perhaps only one of death's messengers, must be even a gift, or an agent, of the gods. Some things, dangerous when hidden, are wonderfully serviceable, when recognized and controlled. Sometimes men really have entertained angels unawares.

And so throughout these chapters, although some may think me and those who follow me morbid, and although we may have to enter the dangerous parlour of philosophy, the doubt of our time is to be squarely and fairly faced. In all candour, we are from the start to be confessed parties to it, hiding nothing intentionally, and at the same time trying always to give nothing undue emphasis. The doubt that all seem to know, that many really feel without perhaps clearly confessing, and that some confess or even actually boast, we shall face and examine closely, [p.004] trying as we can to find its true meaning and real worth. In short, the confession of doubt, of our doubt, and the fruits of confession are the burden of these chapters.

II.

THE CONFESSION OF DOUBT.