Hume's: I told him so.
Hume, he said, was evidently playing with scepticism; for himself, he
had no heart to jest upon the subject. The Scotch sceptic acknowledged
that the metaphysical riddles of his "absolute scepticism" exercised,
and ought to exercise, no practical influence on himself or any man;
that the moment he quitted them, and entered into society, "they
appeared to him so frigid and unnatural" that he could not get himself
to interest himself about them any further; that a dinner with a
friend, or a game at backgammon, put them all to flight, and restored
him to the undoubting belief of all the maxims which his meditative
hours had stripped him of. It was natural, Harrington said; for such
scepticism was impossible. He added, however, that, had Hume been
honest, he would never have employed his subtilty in the one-sided way
he did; "for," said he, "if his principles be true, they tell just as
much against those who deny any religious dogmas as against those who
maintain them. Yet everywhere in relation to religion--take the question
of miracles, for example--he argues not as a sceptic at all, but as a
dogmatist, only on the negative side. If his doctrine of 'Ideas' and
of 'Causation' be true, he ought to have maintained that; for any thing
we know, miracles may have occurred a thousand times, and may as often
occur again. Hume," he said, "was amusing himself; but I am not: nor
can any one really feel--many pretend to do so without feeling at
all--the pressure of such doubts as envelop me, and be content to
amuse themselves with them."
I found it very difficult to attack him in the intrenchments he had
thrown up. I thought I would just try for a moment to act on the
Spiritualist's advice, and, throwing aside all "intellectual and
logical processes," all appeals to the "critical faculties," advance
"lightly equipped as Priestley himself," making my appeal to the
"spiritual faculty." I cannot say that the result was at all what
"spiritualism" promises. On the contrary, Harrington parried all such
appeals in a twinkling. He said he did not admit that he had any
"spiritual faculty" which acted in isolation from the intellect;
that religious faith must be founded on religious truth, and even
quasi-religious faith on quasi-religious truth. That the intellect
and the moral and spiritual faculties (if he had any) acted together,
since he felt that he was indivisible, and that the former man
be satisfied as well as the latter; that it was so with all
his faculties, none of which acted in isolation; that however
hunger might prompt to food, he never took what his senses of sight
and touch told him was sand or gravel; that if he indulged love, or
pity, or anger, it was only as the senses and the imagination and
the understanding were busied with objects adequate to elicit them;
that if beautiful poetry excited emotion, it was only as he understood
the meaning and connection of the words. "And what else are you doing
now, while urging me to realize by direct 'insight,' by 'gazing' on
'spiritual truth,' and so forth, the things you wish me to realize,
--I say what are you doing but appealing to me, through these same
media of the senses and the imagination, by rhetoric and logic? How
else can you gain any access to my supposed 'spiritual faculties'?"
I replied, that even the spiritualist did that,--he endeavored to
convince men, I supposed. "Yes," he replied, laughing, "because he
is privileged doubly to abuse logic at one and the same time; to
abuse it in one sense as a fallacious instrument of religious conviction
in the hands of others, and to abuse it in another sense, as an
instrument of fallacious conviction in his own. But you are not so
privileged."
Harrington insisted on the fact, that the whole thing was a delusion;
I might appeal, he said, if I thought proper, to any faculties, or
rudiments of faculties, he possessed, spiritual or otherwise; but he
really could not pretend even to comprehend one syllable I said, if
I denied him the use of his understanding. I might as well, and for
the same reasons, appeal to him without the intervention of his senses,
--for his "soul" could not be more different from his "intellect" than
from them. "Besides," he continued, "I know you do not imagine that any
spiritual faculty acts thus independently of the intellect; and
therefore you are only mocking me."
I thought it best to cut my cable and leave this unsafe anchorage.
I told him that, as he doubted whether man had any distinctly marked
religious and spiritual faculties, while I affirmed that he had,
--although he was quite right in supposing that I did not believe that
they acted except in close conjunction with the intellect,--it made
it difficult to hold any discourse with him. Doubting the Bible, he had
also learned to doubt that doctrine of human depravity, which he once
thought harmonized--and I still thought did alone harmonize--the great
facts of man's essentially religious constitution and his eternally
varied and most egregiously corrupt religious development.
However, I told him that, even in the concession of the probable as a
sufficient rule of conduct in this life, he had granted enough to
condemn utterly his sceptical position.
He now looked sincerely interested. "Let me," said I, "ask you a few
questions." He glanced towards me an arch look. "What!" he said, "you
wish to get the Socratic weather-gage of me, do you? You forget, my dear
uncle, that you introduced me to the Platonic dialectics."
"Heaven forgive you," said I, "for the thought. You know I make little
pretension to your favorite erotetic method: and if I did, oh! do you not
know, Harrington, my son, that, if I could but convince you on this
one subject, I would consent to be confuted by you on every other every
day in the year?--nay, to be trampled under your feet?" I added, with a
faltering voice. "And, besides that, do you not know that there can be
no rivalry between father and son; that it is the only human affection
which forbids it; that pride, and not envy, swells a father's heart, when
he finds himself outdone?"
He was not unmoved; told me he knew that I loved him well, and desired
me to ask any questions I pleased.
He saw how gratified his affection made me feel. I said, gayly, "Well,
then, let me ask (as our old friend with the queer face might have said),
Do you not grant there is such a thing as prudence?"
"I do," he said.
"But to be prudent is, I think, to do that which is most likely to
promote our happiness."
"That which seems most likely, for I do not admit that we know what will."
"That which seems, then, for it is of no consequence."
"Of no consequence! surely there is a little difference between being
and seeming to be."
"All the difference in the world," I replied, "but not in relation to
our choice of conduct, We choose, if prudent, that conduct which, on
the whole, deliberately seems most likely to promote our happiness, and,
as far as that goes, what seems is."
"I grant it; and that probabilities are the measure of it,"
said Harrington.
"You are of Bayle's opinion, that there is in relation to the present
life a probable prudent, and that it would be gross folly to neglect it?"
"Certainly."
"And in proportion as the interest was greater, and extended over a longer
time, you would be content with less and less probabilities to justify
action?"
"I freely grant I should."
"If now a servant came into the room to say that he feared your
farm-house at King's O--- was on fire, though you might think it but
faintly probable, you would not think it prudent to neglect the
information?"
"I certainly should not."
"And if you were immortal here on earth, and the neglect of some probably,
or (we will say) only possibly, true information in relation to some
vital interest might affect it through that whole immortality, you
would consider it prudent to act on almost no probability at all, on the
very faintest presumption of the truth?"
"I must in honesty agree with you so far."
"What does your scepticism promise you, if it be well founded?
Much happiness?"
"To me none; rather the contrary; and to none, I think, can it promise
much."
"And if Christianity be true,--for I speak only of that,--I know there
is not in your estimate any other religion that comes into competition
with it--immortal felicity, immortal misery, depends on it?"
"Yes; it cannot be denied."
"You admit that scepticism may be false, even though it has a
thousand to one in its favor; for by its very principles you know
nothing, and can know nothing, on the subjects to which its doubts
extend?"
"I acknowledge it."
"And Christianity may be true by the very same reasoning, though
the chances be only as one to a thousand?"
"It is so."
"Then by your own confession you are not prudent, for you do not act
in relation to Christianity on the principles on which you say you
act in the affairs of the present life; where you acknowledge that
the least presumption will move you, when the interests are
sufficiently permanent and great."
He told me, with a smile, I might have arrived at the same conclusion
without any argument; for he was willing to acknowledge in general
that he was not prudent, and in relation to this very subject should
always admit, with Byron, that the sincere Christian had an undeniable
advantage over both the infidel and the sceptic; "since," he added,
putting the admission into a very concise form, "their best is
his worst."
"Very well," said I, "Harrington, only remember that your imprudence is
none the less for your admission of it."
"None in the world," he admitted; but be contended there was a flaw
in the argument; for that it was impossible to accept any religion
on merely prudential grounds. And he then went on, in his curious
way, to lament that an unreasonable candor prevented him from here
taking advantage of an ingenious argument adopted by some of the
modern "spiritualists" in reasoning on the probabilities of a
"future life." They contend that it is necessary to insulate the soul
(if it would discover "spiritual truth") from all bias of self-
interest,--from all oblique glances at prospective advantage; in
fact, that only he is fully equipped for discovering "spiritual truth"
who is disinterestedly indifferent as to whether it be discovered or
not. Harrington said he could not pretend that even the sceptic was
so favorably circumstanced as that. "For my part," he said, "I cannot
honestly adopt this view, and always think it prudent to accept as
large an armful of happiness as I can grasp, when truth and duty do
not come in the way."
"And in the name of common sense," I said, "what truth and duty are
to stand in your way? Is not your truth, that there is none?"
"Yes," he replied, smiling; "but is not the truth the truth, as
Falstaff said? though to be sure it was when he was manufacturing his
eleven men in buckram out of two. However, as Mr. Newman, when some
one foretold that he would be some day a Socinian or an infidel, replied,
'Well, if Socinianism or any thing else be the truth, Socinians or
any thing else let us be'; so I must say, if no truth be the truth,
no-truth men let us be."
"Very well," I replied. "Then, it seems, truth stands in the way of
acting prudently; and, instead of remedying our first paradox, we
have started on another, that truth and prudence are here opposed:
for in no other cases (I think) in which you apply your own rule of
the probable to the present life will a mind of your comprehensiveness
say they are opposed; I am sure you will admit the general maxims,
that to lie is inexpedient, and that honesty is the best policy,
and so on."
He granted it.
"But further," said I, "what sort of truth is this, which involves
duty, and yet is opposed to prudence? It is, that there is no truth,
it seems, and this completes the paradox. This strange truth--the
Alpha Omega of the sceptic, his first and his last--is to involve
duty; he is to be a confessor and martyr for it! Nothing less than
happiness and prudence are to be sacrificed to conscience in the matter.
Truly, if the truth that there is no truth involves any duty, it ought
to be the duty of believing that there is no duty to be performed; and
you might as well call yourself a no-duty man as a no-truth man."
He smiled, but replied, that, seriously, it was impossible to adopt
any religious opinions, or to change them, at the bidding of the will.
I admitted, of course, that the will had no direct power in the matter;
but reminded him that, if he meant it had no influence, or even a little,
on the formation or retention of opinions, no one could be a more
strenuous assertor of the contrary than he had often been. I reminded
him it was so notorious that man usually managed to believe as he wished,
that was no one maxim more frequently on the lips of the greatest
philosophers, orators, and poets. But I added that there is also a
legitimate way of influencing will, and that is through the understanding;
and was with the hope of inducing him to reconsider the paradoxes of
scepticism, and not with any expectation of instant or violent change,
that I was anxious to enumerate them on the present occasion.
It is impossible for me to recollect exactly the course
of the long conversation that ensued; suffice it to say, that he
willingly granted many other paradoxes, some of them so readily, as
to confirm the suspicion I had sometimes felt, that he must often
have doubted the validity of his doubts. He admitted, for example,
that since men in general (whether from the possession of a distinct
religious faculty, though it might be corrupt and depraved, or a
mere rudimentary tendency to religion) had adapted some religion,
religious scepticism, in an intelligible sense, was opposed to nature;
--that it was equally opposed to nature, inasmuch as the general
constitution of man sought and loved certainty, or supposed certainty,
and found a state of perpetual doubt intolerable; and that if this be
attributed to a tendency to dogmatism, that is the very tendency of
nature which is affirmed;--that it is opposed to nature again in this
way, that whereas restlessness and agitation of mind are usually, at
all events, warnings to seek relief, scepticism produces these as its
pure and proper result;--that since, by the confession of every mind
worthy of respect, the great doctrines of religion, if not true, are
such that we cannot but wish they were; since, by his own confession,
scepticism has nothing to allure in it, and rather causes misery than
happiness; and since, by his confession and that of every one else, men
in general easily believe as they wish, it is an unaccountable paradox,
that any one should remain a sceptic for a day, except, indeed, from a
guilty fear of the truth;--that, since scepticism tends to misery, it
is better not to know its truth, and that therefore ignorance is better
than knowledge;--that, if Christianity be an illusion, it, at all events,
tends to make men happier than the truth of scepticism, and that therefore
error is better than truth;--that religious scepticism is open to the
same objection as scepticism absolute; for whereas the last is taunted
with trusting to reason to prove that reason can in nothing be trusted,
religious scepticism is chargeable with declaring the certainty of all
uncertainty, and, while proclaiming: that there is nothing true, avowing
that that is truth and lastly, that if, in consistency, it leaves
even that uncertainty uncertain, it arrives at a conclusion which
everlastingly remits us to renewed investigation!
"But," said he, "the sceptic does affirm the certainty of all
uncertainty. That is precisely my state of mind, even in relation
to Christianity. Both its truth and falsehood are--uncertain."
"Then," said I, "I must not say you reject Christianity, but only
that you do not receive it?
"Precisely so," said he, with a smile and a blush at the same time.
I was much amused with this logical ceremoniousness, by which a man
is not to say that he rejects any thing so conditioned, but only
that he does not receive it. I told him I imagined they came to
much the same thing.
"It is impossible," said he, after a pause, "to affirm any thing on
these subjects."
"It is equally impossible?" said I, "to affirm nothing; on the
contrary, you sceptics have two conclusions, though in a negative
form, for every body else's one,--together with the pleasant addition,
that they are contraries to one another; and as Pascal said that the
man who attempted to be neuter between the sceptic and dogmatist was
a sceptic par excellence, so the genuine sceptic may be called a
dogmatist par excellence."
"For my part," said he, smiling sadly, "I hardly think it is very
difficult either to believe nothing or every thing. Fellowes, you see,
has believed everything, and now he is in a fair way to believe nothing.
However, all I mean is, that the evidence on these subjects reduces
one to a state of complete mental suspense, in which it is equally
unreasonable to say that we believe, as to say that we believe not.
However, I grant you most of the paradoxes you mention; but a sceptic
is not to be startled by paradoxes, I trow; alas! they prove nothing."
"Prove nothing! nay, I think you do your system injustice; I think it
is entitled to the distinction of making great discoveries. You confess
that the only truth on these subjects is, that there is no truth; that
to act on this truth necessitates a conduct opposed to nature, to
prudence, to happiness; that it is a knowledge worse than ignorance;
that it is a truth that is worse than error; that it never did, will,
or can be embraced by many, and that it makes the few who embrace it
miserable; you admit further, with me, that men generally believe as
they wish. Why, then, do you not fly from so hideous a monster, on
the very ground (only in this case it is stronger) on which you doubt
all religious systems,--that is, on account of the supposed paradoxes
they involve? It may be but a little argument with you, who seem to
demand demonstration of religious truth; but for myself, I feel that,
whatever be the truth, such a chimera as scepticism, bristling all
over with paradoxes, must be--a lie."
"Well," he replied, "but then which religion is the true?"
"Nay," I said, "that is an after consideration; if you can but be
brought to believe that any is true, I know you will believe but one."
"You touched just now," he replied, "on the very difficulty. I shall
believe as soon as any one gives me what you truly say I ask,--
demonstration of the truth of some one of the thousand and one religious
systems which men have believed."
"And that, demonstration," said I, "you cannot have; for God has not
granted demonstration to man on that or any other subject in which
duty is involved."
"But why might I not have had it? and should I not have had it, if it
had been incumbent on me to believe it?"
We had now come to the very knot of the whole argument.
"Incumbent on you to believe! I suppose you mean, if there had been
any system which you could not but believe; which you must believe
whether you would or not. No doubt, in that case, the requisite
evidence would have been such that scepticism would have been
impossible; that word 'incumbent' implies duty; and that word duty
is the key to the whole mystery, for it implies the possibility of
resisting its claims. We do not speak of its being incumbent on a man
to run out of a burning house, or to swim, if he can, when thrown
into deep water. He cannot help it. If there be a Supreme Ruler of the
universe, and if the posture of his intelligent creatures be that of
submissive obedience to him, it is inconceivable that a man can ever
have experience of his being willing to perform that duty with the
sort of demonstration which you demand; and, for aught we know, it
may be impossible, constituted as we are, that we should ever be
actually trained to that duty, except in the midst of very much less
than certainty. Now, if this be so,--and I defy you or any man to
prove that it may not be so,--then we are asking a simple impossibility
when we ask that we may be freed from these conditions; for it is
asking that we may perform our duty, under circumstances which shall
render all duty impossible." I pursued this subject at some length,
and reminded him that the supposed law of our religious condition was
throughout in analogy with that of the entire condition of our present
life, and in conformity with his own rule of the probable; that it is
probable evidence only that is given to man in either case, and
"probable evidence," as Bishop Butler says, "often of even wretchedly
insufficient character." Nature, or rather God himself, everywhere
cries aloud to us, "O mortals! certainty, demonstration, infallibility,
are not for you, and shall not be given to you; for there must be a sphere
for faith, hope, sincerity, diligence, patience." And as if to prove to
us, not only that this evidence is what we must trust to, but that we
safely may, He impels us by strong necessities of our lower nature
operating on the higher (which would otherwise, perhaps, plead for the
sceptic's inaction in relation to this as well as to another world)
to play our part; if we stand shivering on the brink of action,
necessity plunges us headlong in; if we fear to hoist the sail, the
strength of the current of life snaps our moorings, and compels us to
drive. I reminded him, that the general result also shows that, as man
must, so he may, can, will, shall, (and so through all the moods and
tenses of contingency,) do well; that faith in that same sort of evidence
which the sceptic rejects when urged in behalf of religion, prompts the
farmer to cast in his seed, though he can command no blink of sunshine,
nor a drop of rain; the merchant to commit his treasures to the deep,
though they may all go to the bottom, and sometimes do; the physician
to essay the cure of his patient, though often half in doubt whether
his remedy will kill or save. "It is," said I, "in that same faith
that we build, and plant, and lay our little plans each day; sometimes
coming to nothing, but generally, and according to the fidelity and
manliness with which we have conducted ourselves, securing more than
a return for the moral capital embarked; and even where this is not
the case, issuing, when there have been the qualities which would
naturally secure success, a vigor and robustness of character,
which, like the rude health glowing in the weather-beaten mariner,
who has buffeted with wind and wave, are a more precious recompense
than success itself. In these examples God says to us in effect,
'On such evidence you must and shall act,' and shows us that we
safely may. Without promising us absolute success in all our plans,
or absolute truth in the investigation of evidence, he says, in either
case, 'Do your best; be faithful to the light you have, diligent and
conscientious in your investigations of available evidence, great or
little,--act fearlessly on what appears the truth, and leave the
rest to me.'"
Harrington here asked the question I expected:--"But suppose different
men coming (as they do) on religious subjects to different conclusions,
after the diligence and fidelity of which you speak, what then?"
"Then, if the fidelity and diligence have been absolute,--if all has
been done which, under the circumstances, could be done,--I doubt not
they are blameless. But I fear there are very few who can absolutely
say this; and for those who cannot say it at all, their guilt is
proportionate to the demands which the momentous nature of the subject
made on diligence and fidelity."
"I suppose" said he, with some hesitation, "you will not allow that
I have exercised this impartial search; and yet, supposing that I have,
will you not hold me blameless on the very principles now laid down?"