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.
[p.005]