The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
the miser who has been led by the association of ideas to prefer his
gold to all the goods he might buy therewith.
In short, if I am born with such a superior general reaction to
evidence that I can guess right and act accordingly, and gain all that
comes of right action, while my less gifted neighbor (paralyzed by his
scruples and waiting for more evidence which he dares not anticipate,
much as he longs to) still stands shivering on the brink, by what law
shall I be forbidden to reap the advantages of my superior native
sensitiveness? Of course I yield to my belief in such a case as this
or distrust it, alike at my peril, just as I do in any of the great
practical decisions of life. If my inborn faculties are good, I am a
prophet; if poor, I am a failure: nature spews me out of her mouth, and
there is an end of me. In the total game of life we stake our persons
all the while; and if in its theoretic part our persons will help us to
a conclusion, surely we should also stake them there, however
inarticulate they may be.[2]
{95}
But in being myself so very articulate in proving what to all readers
with a sense for reality will seem a platitude, am I not wasting words?
We cannot live or think at all without some degree of faith. Faith is
synonymous with working hypothesis. The only difference is that while
some hypotheses can be refuted in five minutes, others may defy ages.
A chemist who conjectures that a certain wall-paper contains arsenic,
and has faith enough to lead him to take the trouble to put some of it
into a hydrogen bottle, finds out by the results of his action whether
he was right or wrong. But theories like that of Darwin, or that of
the kinetic constitution of matter, may exhaust the labors of
generations in their corroboration, each tester of their truth
proceeding in this simple way,--that he acts as if it were true, and
expects the result to disappoint him if his assumption is false. The
longer disappointment is delayed, the stronger grows his faith in his
theory.
Now, in such questions as God, immortality, absolute morality, and
free-will, no non-papal believer at the present day pretends his faith
to be of an essentially different complexion; he can always doubt his
creed. But his intimate persuasion is that the odds in its favor are
strong enough to warrant him in acting all along on the assumption of
its truth. His corroboration or repudiation by the nature of things
may be deferred until the day of judgment. The {96} uttermost he now
means is something like this: "I _expect_ then to triumph with tenfold
glory; but if it should turn out, as indeed it may, that I have spent
my days in a fool's paradise, why, better have been the dupe of _such_
a dreamland than the cunning reader of a world like that which then
beyond all doubt unmasks itself to view." In short, we _go in_ against
materialism very much as we should _go in_, had we a chance, against
the second French empire or the Church of Rome, or any other system of
things toward which our repugnance is vast enough to determine
energetic action, but too vague to issue in distinct argumentation.
Our reasons are ludicrously incommensurate with the volume of our
feeling, yet on the latter we unhesitatingly act.
Now, I wish to show what to my knowledge has never been clearly pointed
out, that belief (as measured by action) not only does and must
continually outstrip scientific evidence, but that there is a certain
class of truths of whose reality belief is a factor as well as a
confessor; and that as regards this class of truths faith is not only
licit and pertinent, but essential and indispensable. The truths
cannot become true till our faith has made them so.
Suppose, for example, that I am climbing in the Alps, and have had the
ill-luck to work myself into a position from which the only escape is
by a terrible leap. Being without similar experience, I have no
evidence of my ability to perform it successfully; but hope and
confidence in myself make me sure I shall not miss my aim, and nerve my
feet to execute what without those subjective emotions would perhaps
have been impossible. But suppose that, on the contrary, {97} the
emotions of fear and mistrust preponderate; or suppose that, having
just read the Ethics of Belief, I feel it would be sinful to act upon
an assumption unverified by previous experience,--why, then I shall
hesitate so long that at last, exhausted and trembling, and launching
myself in a moment of despair, I miss my foothold and roll into the
abyss. In this case (and it is one of an immense class) the part of
wisdom clearly is to believe what one desires; for the belief is one of
the indispensable preliminary conditions of the realization of its
object. _There are then cases where faith creates its own
verification_. Believe, and you shall be right, for you shall save
yourself; doubt, and you shall again be right, for you shall perish.
The only difference is that to believe is greatly to your advantage.
The future movements of the stars or the facts of past history are
determined now once for all, whether I like them or not. They are
given irrespective of my wishes, and in all that concerns truths like
these subjective preference should have no part; it can only obscure
the judgment. But in every fact into which there enters an element of
personal contribution on my part, as soon as this personal contribution
demands a certain degree of subjective energy which, in its turn, calls
for a certain amount of faith in the result,--so that, after all, the
future fact is conditioned by my present faith in it,--how trebly
asinine would it be for me to deny myself the use of the subjective
method, the method of belief based on desire!
In every proposition whose bearing is universal (and such are all the
propositions of philosophy), the acts of the subject and their
consequences throughout eternity should be included in the formula. If
_M_ {98} represent the entire world _minus_ the reaction of the thinker
upon it, and if _M_ + _x_ represent the absolutely total matter of
philosophic propositions (_x_ standing for the thinker's reaction and
its results),--what would be a universal truth if the term x were of
one complexion, might become egregious error if _x_ altered its
character. Let it not be said that _x_ is too infinitesimal a
component to change the character of the immense whole in which it lies
imbedded. Everything depends on the point of view of the philosophic
proposition in question. If we have to define the universe from the
point of view of sensibility, the critical material for our judgment
lies in the animal kingdom, insignificant as that is, quantitatively
considered. The moral definition of the world may depend on phenomena
more restricted still in range. In short, many a long phrase may have
its sense reversed by the addition of three letters, _n-o-t_; many a
monstrous mass have its unstable equilibrium discharged one way or the
other by a feather weight that falls.
Let us make this clear by a few examples. The philosophy of evolution
offers us to-day a new criterion to serve as an ethical test between
right and wrong. Previous criteria, it says, being subjective, have
left us still floundering in variations of opinion and the _status
belli_. Here is a criterion which is objective and fixed: _That is to
be called good which is destined to prevail or survive_. But we
immediately see that this standard can only remain objective by leaving
myself and my conduct out. If what prevails and survives does so by my
help, and cannot do so without that help; if something else will
prevail in case I alter my conduct,--how can I possibly now, conscious
of alternative courses of action open before me, either of which {99} I
may suppose capable of altering the path of events, decide which course
to take by asking what path events will follow? If they follow my
direction, evidently my direction cannot wait on them. The only
possible manner in which an evolutionist can use his standard is the
obsequious method of forecasting the course society would take _but for
him_, and then putting an extinguisher on all personal idiosyncrasies
of desire and interest, and with bated breath and tiptoe tread
following as straight as may be at the tail, and bringing up the rear
of everything. Some pious creatures may find a pleasure in this; but
not only does it violate our general wish to lead and not to follow (a
wish which is surely not immoral if we but lead aright), but if it be
treated as every ethical principle must be treated,--namely, as a rule
good for all men alike,--its general observance would lead to its
practical refutation by bringing about a general deadlock. Each good
man hanging back and waiting for orders from the rest, absolute
stagnation would ensue. Happy, then, if a few unrighteous ones
contribute an initiative which sets things moving again!
All this is no caricature. That the course of destiny may be altered
by individuals no wise evolutionist ought to doubt. Everything for him
has small beginnings, has a bud which may be 'nipped,' and nipped by a
feeble force. Human races and tendencies follow the law, and have also
small beginnings. The best, according to evolution, is that which has
the biggest endings. Now, if a present race of men, enlightened in the
evolutionary philosophy, and able to forecast the future, were able to
discern in a tribe arising near them the potentiality of future
supremacy; were able to see that their own {100} race would eventually
be wiped out of existence by the new-comers if the expansion of these
were left unmolested,--these present sages would have two courses open
to them, either perfectly in harmony with the evolutionary test:
Strangle the new race now, and ours survives; help the new race, and it
survives. In both cases the action is right as measured by the
evolutionary standard,--it is action for the winning side.
Thus the evolutionist foundation of ethics is purely objective only to
the herd of nullities whose votes count for zero in the march of
events. But for others, leaders of opinion or potentates, and in
general those to whose actions position or genius gives a far-reaching
import, and to the rest of us, each in his measure,--whenever we
espouse a cause we contribute to the determination of the evolutionary
standard of right. The truly wise disciple of this school will then
admit faith as an ultimate ethical factor. Any philosophy which makes
such questions as, What is the ideal type of humanity? What shall be
reckoned virtues? What conduct is good? depend on the question, What
is going to succeed?--must needs fall back on personal belief as one of
the ultimate conditions of the truth. For again and again success
depends on energy of act; energy again depends on faith that we shall
not fail; and that faith in turn on the faith that we are right,--which
faith thus verifies itself.
Take as an example the question of optimism or pessimism, which makes
so much noise just now in Germany. Every human being must sometime
decide for himself whether life is worth living. Suppose that in
looking at the world and seeing how full it is of misery, of old age,
of wickedness and {101} pain, and how unsafe is his own future, he
yields to the pessimistic conclusion, cultivates disgust and dread,
ceases striving, and finally commits suicide. He thus adds to the mass
_M_ of mundane phenomena, independent of his subjectivity, the
subjective complement _x_, which makes of the whole an utterly black
picture illumined by no gleam of good. Pessimism completed, verified
by his moral reaction and the deed in which this ends, is true beyond a
doubt. _M_ + _x_ expresses a state of things totally bad. The man's