IV.
To come down to more recent times, for open belief in what they doubted, for doubt well controlled in its expenditure, for doubt as raising questions of meaning rather than the more radical questions of reality and existence, perhaps no people of Christendom has been so conspicuous as the English. Of course, as has been remarked, expenditure may often become too conservative, and the question of mere meaning may encourage casuistry; and into the pits of undue conservatism and casuistry the English have certainly fallen more than once, so that certain critics have even found them, and in some measure the Anglo-Saxons generally, given over to hollow disingenuous living. In English political life, for example, the attitude during the conflict with the American colonies in the eighteenth century affords a conspicuous illustration of this, and intellectually and religiously English life, has its chapters of an unfortunate reserve. But although no good and honest American can fail to find objectionable solecisms, some of them decidedly British, in the formulated and manifested life of the Anglo-Saxons; nevertheless English history is a very obstinate argument in behalf of the English temper. Frenchmen, though so neighbourly to England, have been conspicuously more radical than the English in their doubts and problems, and in consequence have been at once more reckless and more vacillating in their solutions. The English, always so practical, throughout their history have held to their world as primarily real and consistent, and have therefore neither lost themselves whether in fear or in hope of some other sphere, nor been only fickle servants of this. Consistently and constantly they have sought only the ever more effective use of what they had, of what they found about them. Not revolution, then, but evolution has been the keynote of their history. Their other world, in practice, has meant other parts of this—witness their colonial activity as well as their missionary enterprises—or only other in the sense of deeper and fuller expression of this—witness the testimony of so many of their historians. Macaulay, for a classic example, dwells at some length and with much emphasis upon the English people's genius for a progressive conservatism, remarking that in religion and politics and social life they have given up less of their past than any other people, and yet at the same time have kept in the forefront of modern progress. It may be contended that this was truer in Macaulay's day than at the present time, but there is enough truth in it now to give it point.
Instead of courting doubt as if it had worth in itself, the English may be said on the whole to have courted candour. Candour does not exclude doubt, but it is never merely negative, and for this reason it is peculiarly normal and wholesome, although of course having its own dangers. To be candid, in the sense of the word here intended, is to accept what is, which in lack of a better term we may call nature, and to insist only on seeing this, and living up to it, deeply and fully. The doubting French have appealed to truth and righteousness or reality as only an innate conviction, and so have easily missed the possible realism of such conviction. Descartes made just such an appeal, and though he did indeed gain, or rather regain, a real world, the reality did not quite receive even from him, as we have seen, its full due of closeness and intimacy with human life. Rousseau, later, made the same appeal, finding his own personal will intrinsically good, but his philosophy, though a passionate, uncontrolled belief in reality, was taken, not unnaturally, as a call to revolution. But the simple, candid English, on their side of the Channel, have appealed, not primarily to anything abstractly within the self, not to a mere ideal or sentiment or subjective belief, but to reality embodied and palpable—in a word, to nature, the great all-inclusive sphere of candid experience. In France, again, nature has failed ever to be a thoroughly practical thing, a positive, directly interesting, wholly pertinent situation. It has been a cry, of course, sometimes of alarm, sometimes of hope; a great enthusiasm, too; a dream; an ideal—if not unideal—substitute for the present life; a sphere often, too often, quite opposed to God and government and organized society; but never, or almost never, a present responsibility to be clearly recognized and calmly measured; never, or almost never, a part and parcel of the present life; never, or almost never, something that lives in and through God and government and society. In England, on the other hand, so differently, if Bacon and Locke and Berkeley and even David Hume may be trusted; if Shakespeare and Coleridge and Wordsworth, or Hobbes and Burke and Blackstone, or Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer are representative; in England nature has ever been very real and very present; not outside of manifest English life, but actually incorporated in it. How else understand English deism; the laissez faire economics; the peculiar nature and growth of the English constitution; the pragmatism of English science; the sun-warmed atmosphere of English literature; the nature-homage and bodily vigour of English recreation? How else account for the English people's progressive conservatism?
The most radical doubt must eventually appeal to nature and, what is more, must sooner or later bring man to live with nature practically and responsibly, intimately and sympathetically; but candour, like the candour of the English, that never doubts without at the same time believing, lives ever with her. Perhaps the English people need to have what they seem never to have had—though the Armada threatened something of the kind, and the loss of the thirteen colonies, or even the Boer war was, not without its value—a great, overpowering disaster, a deep all-searching despair; yet, be this as it may, their part in the struggle of a life that must always doubt in order to grow is always instructive and is often inspiring.
V.
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 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 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.
VI.
Is life, then, only a comedy? Is it no better than one of those well-conducted duels that save the honour of all, concerned but bring injury to no one? Let me say, in these last pages, that life appears to be three things, to which I should like to call attention. It truly and seriously is a comedy; secondly, it is poetic; and lastly, it has all the gravity and earnestness of duty. Its very tragedy comprises all of these. An old teacher of mine, a much respected and somewhat old-fashioned professor at one of our larger universities,[2] once published a book entitled, Poetry, Comedy and Duty. Exactly what his reasons were for associating these apparently incongruous phases of life I do not recall, but the man and his title have remained pleasantly and significantly in my memory, and the reasons which follow, in substance if not in form, can not be very far from his.