The sceptic has been referred to here as a member of a wonderful
triumvirate, and, leaving now the field of historical illustration, we
must return to that characterization. The other members of the
triumvirate were the loyal defender of the formal law and the great
spiritual leader. All three were said to be parties to the real life of
the spirit, and the sceptic seemed to have a co-ordinate part with the
others in this life. But was I not conceding too much? Certainly there
are many who will wish to protest. Yet I was only making the doubter and
the believer face each other squarely and honestly. _Both_ are parties
to any reform. No leader or true reformer ever can neglect or betray the
contentions of either. In the organizations of society professional
conditions may hold the two characters apart, but vitally they always
belong together. If truly we must believe in what we doubt, how can
there fail to be between them, not indeed a shallow and sentimental
sympathy, but a deep, heroic sympathy that is always superior to the
differences of the disrupted life, of a professionally organized
society, without betraying them?
At once opponents and companions--this is the truth about the doubter
and the believer. Consider how taken alone neither would be quite
justified, while together both are justified. Perfect approval or, for
that matter, perfect disapproval, can belong to neither singly, not to
you or me in our doubting, even though we fully confess, nor yet to him
who hides his doubts in an outward show that [p.274] almost deceives him
as well as others. Of course in all matters as well as in this of
intellectual honesty, the conceit of individual righteousness or
individual possession is a very strong one, but it is "easier for a
camel to go through a needle's eye" than for a man who is anything or
has anything to himself alone, to enter into any kingdom. Is not life
everywhere a movement and a struggle? And who is there, rich or poor,
law-abiding or lawless, righteous or unrighteous, faithful or
treacherous, believing or doubting, who can stand aloof, or who needs to
stand aloof, and say to himself: "I personally, within my own nature,
have no part in the struggle; for good or for ill, I am just what I am,
and with him that is against me I have and can have no dealings"? The
doubter, then, and the believer may have to look askance at each other;
the looking askance may be quite appropriate to the conflict in which
each has and must feel his social rôle, but, at most and worst, they are
only jealous lovers. They may be given, and profitably given, as much to
quarrelling as to gentleness, but they love still, and, to borrow part
of a line from a familiar college song, their battling love affords just
one more view of that which "makes the world go 'round"--instead of off
at some tangent.
Should some one awake to new views come to me and ask which I would have
him do, break away from his traditions and all that they involve or hold
to them, I could only say, in the first place, that, whichever way he
turned, he would have some, though only some, justification, for he
could not be either right or wrong exclusively; in the second place,
that his decision [p.275] not only must be made, and made strongly, one
way or the other, but must also be his, not mine; and in the third
place, that no decision should ever be an absolutely final settlement.
Decisions are only means to action, and as such they can settle nothing
finally. They are not even protocols of peace, often being, on the
contrary, merely signals for firing at closer range. Sometimes I know
they seem even like real treaties, providing the terms of a permanent
harmony, and they appear to determine just where the parties to them
really stand. But, after all, they do but bring the conflict home,
making it domestic or personal instead of settling it. So once more to
my inquirer I may say only this: Choose; fight; fight fair; fight with
yourself as well as with your enemy; with your belief, not merely with
his dogma; or with your doubt, not merely with his dishonesty. So
fighting you and he will truly be at once opponents and companions.