altogether differ at the base of society, but they agree, or tend to
agree, at its summit. As society goes on, the standard of beauty, and of
morality, and of religion also, tends to become fixed. The creeds of the
higher classes throughout the world, though far from identical in these
respects, are not entirely unlike, approach to similarity, approach to it
more and more as cultivation augments, goodness improves, and disturbing
agencies fall aside.
‘The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips,
Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair;
The Grecian gods are like the Greeks,
As keen-eyed, cold, and fair.’
Such is the various and miscellaneous religion of barbarism; but the
religion and the morality of all the best among all nations tend more
and more to be the same with ‘the progress of the suns,’ and as society
itself improves.
The instincts of morality and religion, though we have called them two
for facility of speech, run into one another, and in practical human
nature are not easily separated. The distinction, like so many others
in mental philosophy, is not drawn where accurate science would have
directed, but where the first notions of mankind, and the necessity of
easy speaking, in a language shaped according to those notions, have
suggested. In a refined analysis, the instinct of religion, as we have
called it, is a complex aggregate of various instincts, not a single and
homogeneous one. But to analyse these, or even to name them, would be
far from our purpose now. Our business is with the relation between the
instinct of morality and that of religion, and with no other perplexities
or difficulties. The instinct of morality is the basis, and the instinct
of moral religion is based upon it, and arises out of it. We feel first
the intrinsic qualities of good actions and bad actions; then, as the
Greek proverb expressed it, ‘Where there is shame there is fear;’ we
expect consequences apportioned to our actions, good and evil; lastly,
for within the limits of purely moral ideas there is no higher stage, we
rise to the conception of Him who in His wisdom adjusts and allots those
far-off consequences to those conspicuous actions. The higher instinct
is based on the lower; would fade in the mind should the lower fade.
The coalescence of instinct effects what no other contrivance known to
us could effect; it enables us to be disinterested, although we know
the consequences of evil actions, because conscience is the revealing
sensation, and we only know those consequences so long as we are
disinterested.
These fundamental difficulties of life and morals are little discussed.
Few think of them clearly, and still fewer speak of them much. But they
cloud the brain and confuse the hopes of many who never stated them
explicitly to themselves, and never heard them stated explicitly by
others. Meanwhile superficial difficulties are in every one’s mouth; we
are deafened with controversies on remote matters which do not concern
us; we are confused with ‘Aids to Faith’ which neither harm nor help
us. A tumult of irrelevant theology is in the air which oppresses men’s
heads, and darkens their future, and scatters their hopes. For such a
calamity there is no thorough cure; it belongs to the confused epoch of
an age of transition, and is inseparable from it. But the best palliative
is a steady attention to primary difficulties—if possible, a clear
mastery over them; if not, a distinct knowledge how we stand respecting
them. The shrewdest man of the world who ever lived tells us, ‘That he
who begins in certainties shall end in doubts; but he who begins in
doubts shall end in certainties;’ and the maxim is even more applicable
to matters which are not of this world than to those which are.
_ON THE EMOTION OF CONVICTION._[23]
(1871.)
What we commonly term Belief includes, I apprehend, both an Intellectual
and an Emotional element; the first we more properly call ‘assent,’ and
the second ‘conviction.’ The laws of the Intellectual element in belief
are ‘the laws of evidence,’ and have been elaborately discussed; but
those of the Emotional part have hardly been discussed at all—indeed, its
existence has been scarcely perceived.
In the mind of a rigorously trained inquirer, the process of believing
is, I apprehend, this:—First comes the investigation, a set of facts are
sifted, and a set of arguments weighed; then the intellect perceives the
result of those arguments, and, we say, assents to it. Then an emotion
more or less strong sets in, which completes the whole. In calm and quiet
minds, the intellectual part of this process is so much the strongest
that they are hardly conscious of anything else; and as these quiet,
careful people have written our treatises, we do not find it explained in
them how important the emotional part is.
But take the case of the Caliph Omar, according to Gibbon’s description
of him. He burnt the Alexandrine Library, saying, ‘All books which
contain what is not in the Koran are dangerous; all those which contain
what is in the Koran are useless.’ Probably no one ever had an intenser
belief in anything than Omar had in this. Yet it is impossible to imagine
it preceded by an argument. His belief in Mahomet, in the Koran, and in
the sufficiency of the Koran, came to him probably in spontaneous rushes
of emotion; there may have been little vestiges of argument floating here
and there, but they did not justify the strength of the emotion, still
less did they create it, and they hardly even excused it.
There is so commonly some considerable argument for our modern beliefs,
that it is difficult now-a-days to isolate the emotional element,
and therefore, on the principle that in Metaphysics ‘egotism is the
truest modesty,’ I may give myself as an example of utterly irrational
conviction. Some years ago I stood for a borough in the West of England,
and after a keen contest was defeated by seven. Almost directly
afterwards there was accidentally another election, and as I would not
stand, another candidate of my own side was elected, and I of course
ceased to have any hold upon the place, or chance of being elected there.
But for years I had the deepest conviction that I should be Member for
‘Bridgwater’; and no amount of reasoning would get it out of my head. The
borough is now disfranchised; but even still, if I allow my mind to dwell
on the contest,—if I think of the hours I was ahead in the morning, and
the rush of votes at two o’clock by which I was defeated,—and even more,
if I call up the image of the nomination day, with all the people’s hands
outstretched, and all their excited faces looking the more different on
account of their identity in posture, the old feeling almost comes back
upon me, and for a moment I believe that I shall be Member for Bridgwater.
I should not mention such nonsense, except on an occasion when I may
serve as an intellectual ‘specimen,’[24] but I know I wish that I could
feel the same hearty, vivid faith in many conclusions of which my
understanding says it is satisfied, that I did in this absurdity. And
if it should be replied that such folly could be no real belief, for it
could not influence any man’s action, I am afraid I must say that it
did influence my actions. For a long time the ineradicable fatalistic
feeling, that I should some time have this constituency, of which I
had no chance, hung about my mind, and diminished my interest in other
constituencies, where my chances of election would have been rational, at
any rate.
This case probably exhibits the _maximum_ of conviction with the
_minimum_ of argument, but there are many approximations to it. Persons
of untrained minds cannot long live without some belief in any topic
which comes much before them. It has been said that if you can only get a
middle-class Englishman to think whether there are ‘snails in Sirius,’ he
will soon have an opinion on it. It will be difficult to make him think,
but if he does think, he cannot rest in a negative, he will come to some
decision. And on any ordinary topic, of course, it is so. A grocer has a
full creed as to foreign policy, a young lady a complete theory of the
sacraments, as to which neither has any doubt whatever. But in talking to
such persons, I cannot but remember my Bridgwater experience, and ask
whether causes like those which begat my folly may not be at the bottom
of their ‘invincible knowledge.’
Most persons who observe their own thoughts must have been conscious of
the exactly opposite state. There are cases where our intellect has gone
through the arguments, and we give a clear assent to the conclusions. But
our minds seem dry and unsatisfied. In that case we have the intellectual
part of Belief, but want the emotional part.
That belief is not a purely intellectual matter is evident from dreams,
where we are always believing, but scarcely ever arguing; and from
certain forms of insanity, where fixed delusions seize upon the mind
and generate a firmer belief than any sane person is capable of. These
are, of course, ‘unorthodox’ states of mind; but a good psychology must
explain them, nevertheless, and perhaps it would have progressed faster
if it had been more ready to compare them with the waking states of sane
people.
Probably, when the subject is thoroughly examined, ‘conviction’ will be
proved to be one of the intensest of human emotions, and one most closely
connected with the bodily state. In cases like the Caliph Omar’s, it
governs all other desires, absorbs the whole nature, and rules the whole
life. And in such cases it is accompanied or preceded by the sensation
that Scott makes his seer describe as the prelude to a prophecy:—
‘At length the fatal answer came,
In characters of living flame—
Not spoke in word, nor blazed in scroll,
But borne and branded on my soul.’
A hot flash seems to burn across the brain. Men in these intense states
of mind have altered all history, changed for better or worse the creed
of myriads, and desolated or redeemed provinces and ages. Nor is this
intensity a sign of truth, for it is precisely strongest in those points
in which men differ most from each other. John Knox felt it in his
anti-Catholicism; Ignatius Loyola in his anti-Protestantism; and both, I
suppose, felt it as much as it is possible to feel it.
Once acutely felt, I believe it is indelible; at least, it does something
to the mind which it is hard for anything else to undo. It has been often
said that a man who has once really loved a woman, never can be without
feeling towards that woman again. He may go on loving her, or he may
change and hate her. In the same way, I think, experience proves that
no one who has had real passionate conviction of a creed, the sort of
emotion that burns hot upon the brain, can ever be indifferent to that
creed again. He may continue to believe it, and to love it; or he may
change to the opposite, vehemently argue against it, and persecute it.
But he cannot forget it. Years afterwards, perhaps, when life changes,
when external interests cease to excite, when the apathy to surroundings
which belongs to the old, begins all at once, to the wonder of later
friends, who cannot imagine what is come to him, the grey-headed man
returns to the creed of his youth.
The explanation of these facts in metaphysical books is very imperfect.
Indeed, I only know one school which professes to explain the emotion,
as distinguished from the intellectual element in belief. Mr. Mill
(after Mr. Bain) speaks very instructively of the ‘animal nature of
belief,’ but when he comes to trace its cause, his analysis seems, to me
at least, utterly unsatisfactory. He says that ‘the state of belief is
identical with the activity or active disposition of the system at the
moment with reference to the thing believed.’ But in many cases there
is firm belief where there is no possibility of action or tendency to
it. A girl in a country parsonage will be sure ‘that Paris never can
be taken,’ or that ‘Bismarck is a wretch,’ without being able to act
on these ideas or wanting to act on them. Many beliefs, in Coleridge’s
happy phrase, slumber in the ‘dormitory of the soul’; they are present to
the consciousness, but they incite to no action. And perhaps Coleridge
is an example of misformed mind in which not only may ‘Faith’ not
produce ‘works,’ but in which it had a tendency to prevent works. Strong
convictions gave him a kind of cramp in the will, and he could not act
on them. And in very many persons much-indulged conviction exhausts the
mind with the attached ideas; teases it, and so, when the time of action
comes, makes it apt to turn to different, perhaps opposite ideas, and to
act on them in preference.
As far as I can perceive, the power of an idea to cause conviction,
independently of any intellectual process, depends on four properties.
1st. _Clearness._ The more unmistakable an idea is to a particular mind,
the more is that mind predisposed to believe it. In common life we may
constantly see this. If you once make a thing quite clear to a person,
the chances are that you will almost have persuaded him of it. Half the
world only understand what they believe, and always believe what they
understand.
2nd. _Intensity._ This is the main cause why the ideas that flash on
the minds of seers, as in Scott’s description, are believed; they come
mostly when the nerves are exhausted by fasting, watching, and longing;
they have a peculiar brilliancy, and therefore they are believed. To this
cause I trace too my fixed folly as to Bridgwater. The idea of being
member for the town had been so intensely brought home to me by the
excitement of a contest, that I could not eradicate it, and that as soon
as I recalled any circumstances of the contest it always came back in all
its vividness.
3rd. _Constancy._ As a rule, almost everyone does accept the creed of the
place in which he lives, and everyone without exception has a tendency
to do so. There are, it is true, some minds which a mathematician might
describe as minds of ‘contrary flexure,’ whose particular bent it is to
contradict what those around them say. And the reason is that in their
minds the opposite aspect of every subject is always vividly presented.
But even such minds usually accept the _axioms_ of their district, the
tenets which everybody always believes. They only object to the variable
elements; to the inferences and deductions drawn by some, but not by all.
4th. On the _Interestingness_ of the idea, by which I mean the power of
the idea to gratify some wish or want of the mind. The most obvious is
curiosity about something which is important to me. Rumours that gratify
this excite a sort of half-conviction without the least evidence, and
with a very little evidence a full, eager, not to say a bigoted one. If a
person go into a mixed company, and say authoritatively ‘that the Cabinet
is nearly divided on the Russian question, and that it was only decided
by one vote to send Lord Granville’s despatch,’ most of the company will
attach some weight more or less to the story, without asking how the
secret was known. And if the narrator casually add that he has just seen
a subordinate member of the Government, most of the hearers will go away
and repeat the anecdote with grave attention, though it does not in the
least appear that the lesser functionary told the anecdote about the
Cabinet, or that he knew what passed at it.
And the interest is greater when the news falls in with the bent of the
hearer. A sanguine man will believe with scarcely any evidence that good
luck is coming, and a dismal man that bad luck is coming. As far as I can
make out, the professional ‘Bulls’ and ‘Bears’ of the City _do_ believe a
great deal of what they say, though, of course, there are exceptions, and
though neither the most sanguine ‘bull’ nor the most dismal ‘bear’ can
believe _all_ he says.
Of course, I need not say that this ‘quality’ peculiarly attaches to
the greatest problems of human life. The firmest convictions of the
most inconsistent answers to the everlasting questions ‘whence?’ and
‘whither?’ have been generated by this ‘interestingness’ without evidence
on which one would invest a penny.
In one case, these causes of irrational conviction seem contradictory.
Clearness, as we have seen, is one of them; but obscurity, when obscure
things are interesting, is a cause too. But there is no real difficulty
here. Human nature at different times exhibits contrasted impulses. There
is a passion for sensualism, that is, to eat and drink; and a passion for
asceticism, that is, not to eat and drink; so it is quite likely that the
clearness of an idea may sometimes cause a movement of conviction, and
that the obscurity of another idea may at other times cause one too.
These laws, however, are complex—can they be reduced to any simpler
law of human nature? I confess I think that they can, but at the same
time I do not presume to speak with the same confidence about it that
I have upon other points. Hitherto I have been dealing with the common
facts of the adult human mind, as we may see it in others and feel it
in ourselves. But I am now going to deal with the ‘prehistoric’ period
of the mind in early childhood, as to which there is necessarily much
obscurity.
My theory is, that in the first instance a child believes everything.
Some of its states of consciousness are perceptive or presentative,—that
is, they tell it of some heat or cold, some resistance or
non-resistance, then and there present. Other states of consciousness
are representative,—that is, they say that certain sensations could be
felt or certain facts perceived, in time past or in time to come, or at
some place, no matter at what time, then and there out of the reach of
perception and sensation. In mature life, too, we have these presentative
and representative states in every sort of mixture, but we make a
distinction between them. Without remark and without doubt, we believe
the ‘evidence of our senses,’ that is, the facts of present sensation
and perception; but we do not believe at once and instantaneously the
representative states as to what is non-present, whether in time or
space. But I apprehend that this is an acquired distinction, and that in
early childhood every state of consciousness is believed, whether it be
presentative or representative.
Certainly at the beginning of the ‘historic’ period we catch the mind
at a period of extreme credulity. When memory begins, and when speech
and signs suffice to make a child intelligible, belief is almost
omnipresent, and doubt almost never to be found. Childlike credulity is a
phrase of the highest antiquity, and of the greatest present aptness.
So striking, indeed, on certain points, is this impulse to believe,
that philosophers have invented various theories to explain in detail
some of its marked instances. Thus it has been said that children have
an intuitive disposition to believe in ‘testimony’—that is, in the
correctness of statements orally made to them. And that they do so is
certain. Every child believes what the footman tells it, what its nurse
tells it, and what its mother tells it, and probably every one’s memory
will carry him back to the horrid mass of miscellaneous confusion which
he acquired by believing all he heard. But though it is certain that a
child believes all assertions made to it, it is not certain that the
child so believes in consequence of a special intuitive predisposition
restricted to such assertions. It may be that this indiscriminate belief
in all sayings is but a relic of an omnivorous acquiescence in all states
of consciousness, which is only just extinct when childhood is plain
enough to be understood, or old enough to be remembered.
Again, it has been said much more plausibly that we want an intuitive
tendency to account for our belief in memory. But I question whether
it can be shown that a little child _does_ believe in its memories
more confidently than in its imaginations. A child of my acquaintance
corrected its mother, who said that ‘they should never see’ two of
its dead brothers again, and maintained, ‘Oh yes, mamma, we shall; we
shall see them in heaven, and they will be so glad to see us.’ And then
the child cried with disappointment because its mother, though a most
religious lady, did not seem exactly to feel that seeing her children
in that manner was as good as seeing them on earth. Now I doubt if
that child did not believe this expectation quite as confidently as it
believed any past fact, or as it could believe anything at all, and
though the conclusion may be true, plainly the child believed, not
from the efficacy of the external evidence, but from a strong rush of
inward confidence. Why, then, should we want a special intuition to make
children believe past facts when, in truth, they go farther and believe
with no kind of difficulty future facts as well as past?
If on so abstruse a matter I might be allowed a graphic illustration,
I should define doubt as ‘a hesitation produced by collision.’ A child
possessed with the notion that all its fancies are true, finds that
acting on one of them brings its head against the table. This gives it
pain, and makes it hesitate as to the expediency of doing it again. Early
childhood is an incessant education in scepticism, and early youth is
so too. All boys are always knocking their heads against the physical
world, and all young men are constantly knocking their heads against the
social world. And both of them from the same cause—that they are subject
to an eruption of emotion which engenders a strong belief, but which is
as likely to cause a belief in falsehood as in truth. Gradually, under
the tuition of a painful experience, we come to learn that our strongest
convictions may be quite false, that many of our most cherished ones are
and have been false; and this causes us to seek a ‘criterion’ as to which
beliefs are to be trusted and which are not; and so we are beaten back to
the laws of evidence for our guide, though, as Bishop Butler said, in a
similar case, we object to be bound by anything so ‘poor.’
That it is really this contention with the world which destroys
conviction and which causes doubt, is shown by examining the cases where
the mind is secluded from the world. In ‘dreams,’ where we are out of
collision with fact, we accept everything as it comes, believe everything
and doubt nothing. And in violent cases of mania, where the mind is shut
up within itself, and cannot, from impotence, perceive what is without,
it is as sure of the most chance fancy, as in health it would be of the
best proved truths.