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.