The will to doubt

by Alfred H. Lloyd

This is a splendid utterance, and it has touched a responsive chord in human nature the civilized world over, not so much, however, for the humility of the choice as for the zeal in a life of seeking and striving, or for the idea that knowledge is itself a dynamic thing, a living, moving function, not a passive possession. The knower is made also a doubter, and the doubter appears as having, in a sense, forgotten, without for a moment betraying, the constant doubting within him. If I may so speak, he has, even while he lacks; such is the condition of his seeking; such is the way in which doubting is necessary to real living. Doubt saves from the possession that makes "inert, lazy, proud," yet does not take away. Doubt makes experience always deep, even putting consciousness in touch with reality, and it makes life for ever living.

Still others may be quoted in the same vein. Socrates made life, particularly mental life, if this may be supposed distinct, essentially active or dynamic when he identified true wisdom with self-conscious ignorance, with a power in one of always finding oneself in error, and in modern times Hegel has done the same thing as effectually, though perhaps not in general so intelligibly, by finding a principle of negativity or contradiction the very mainspring of all consciousness, of all thinking. Known truth is at once imperfect or even false, being necessarily partial, relative, and at best only tentative, very much, let us say, recalling something already remarked, as an established form of life is no longer the real life, but merely the developed means to a revolution, a life that is passing even as soon as it has come.

For the rest, the positive value of doubt to real life can hardly need further emphasis. In one form or another the idea, as important as many may find it commonplace, must constantly recur in these pages. We turn, therefore, to our fifth, and for the present, last general fact, with which we shall find ourselves still in sight, perhaps even in clearer sight of the brighter horizon. We are all universal doubters; doubt underlies all consciousness; even habit has gloomy doubt, as Horace would say, sitting up behind; like pain or want, like ignorance or contradiction, doubt is a dynamic principle, making experience deeper and ever deepening, and life real and alive; and fifthly: As man is dependent and feels dependent, he is a doubter. His widespread, or rather his universal, sense of dependence begets doubt. Witness the fact that doubt shows man a seeker after company; the company of nature, the company of his fellows, the company of God.

Of course the social impulse, thus to be associated with doubt, is only one of the phases of its dynamic and life-giving character, for a social life, a life of dependence on what is without, of real relations beyond self, must be a life of real and constant movement. Nothing so much as such relations gives vitality. This special phase, however, of the place of doubt in real life is a very interesting one, and it suggests, besides, so much that is of positive value as almost to transform what so far has been in large part a sceptic's confession into a sceptic's boast.

Thus, in the first place, doubt seeks the company of nature. "Return to nature!" has time and again in human history been the cry of the human heart. Has civilization lost its hold, seeming unreal, artificial, formal? Has morality become hollow? Has a lover suffered the shattering of his dearest hopes? Has a creed lost its credibility? Have you and I wearied of our study or our labour, whatever it be, and come to wonder if it, or anything, is worth while after all? Have friends, ideals, and God Himself deserted us? We turn, and all people turn to nature. Exactly so the homesick traveller takes himself homeward, or the prodigal arises and goes to his father. And your experience and mine, and the poetry of all literatures, which tells so deeply the experiences of all men of all times, are a constant witness to the comfort, and forgiveness, and renewed confidence in self that nature imparts. Nature is our infancy, in which all things are possible; she is our untrammelled will; she is infinitely hopeful for us and infinitely kind; her necessity is so wide and so open that its very law, so different from any human law, is our greatest opportunity. True, our resort to nature is sometimes, perhaps in greater or less degree always, by the way of moral dissipation, or political anarchy, or intellectual suicide, or religious profanity; but even these dark ways to the home and the great mother-heart of us all have never been hopelessly misleading. If history and literature and personal experience can be trusted, even they have led to a kind nature. Have you never failed in anything and become reckless, and then profited from the very knowledge of yourself which the recklessness uncovered? Personally and socially recklessness, return to nature that it is, is always a helpful assistant to nature's great teacher, experience. Great is the pathos, but also, as it is understood, great is the inspiration of Rousseau's passionate outcry that his will was perfectly good. He was incapable of a single wholesome relation in life, yet, so he said, no man was better than he! Rousseau, philosopher of revolution, spoke for nature. Out of her great love, nature always takes the will for the deed—and perhaps she alone should have the privilege of doing that; for she knows that the deed, however violent, however bad, is sure to leave at least the will good.

But intellectually, as well as morally or politically, or as well as in any of the departments of the practical, emotional life, when trouble comes we turn to nature. Nature has a mind as well as a heart, and when state, and church, and social tradition have lost their validity and infallibility, their various formulæ being no longer reasonable to us, when we have to depose them from their position as our accepted teachers, then we become scientists, which is to say, intellectual prodigals. Science, the open-minded study of nature, is only a homesickness for truth seeking relief. Does the scientist doubt? He is one of the princes of doubters. He doubts, as in due time we shall more fully appreciate, even to the extreme position of agnosticism. He doubts all things human that always he may be learning of nature.

So the companionship of nature for the comfort and pardon which she is sure to give, and for the deeper knowledge which she is certain to impart, is a passion of the doubter. True, no passion is free from dangers; yet this passion, at least this passion, has somewhat of hope in it.

But, secondly, the companionship of one's fellows is not less strongly desired. Huddling together in time of distress is by no means peculiar to the animal world; in human life it has more than once made distress seem richly worth while. "We have each other" in word or thought has been the comforting reflection of many a family, or many a community, when the money has gone, or when in other ways, possibly through a great fire, or a great earthquake, or the ravages of a disease, afflictions have come, and "Now we know how others have suffered" has been not less common. Indeed, it is my own conviction that these two reflections always rise together. The distress or affliction of doubt, however, is certainly no exception to the rule. Doubt often separates an individual from the customary corporate life with which he has long identified himself, throwing him out of his church, or his party, or his society, or even his immediate family, but the doubter at once feels his loneliness, and gets a yearning, never realized before, for social relations. Benedict Spinoza may have been better than most of us, but he was not in any other way different, and though maligned and insulted, as earlier in history another of his race had been, for his doubts and heresies, and though exposed to the dangers of the assassin's knife, and finally, when other measures failed, with special cruelties excommunicated by his synagogue, he loved his people, and all men besides, as few have loved them. Doubt makes one dependent; isolation gives a sense of loss; and, if ever a solution of the doubt comes, in the life and consciousness which it enjoins the lost companions, whether they will or not, are included with oneself. In many ways this is an important fact; yet it must suffice that we see the affinity of the doubter for society. Man ever confidently seeks what man has lost. Dependent man and doubting man must have society.

That doubt, furthermore, not only creates a motive to social life, even to the restoration of lost companions, but also by weakening the barriers which have divided some class, a sect perhaps, or a party, or a nation, or a race, from some other class, puts social life on a broader and deeper basis, is also an important fact, and full of significance beyond our immediate interest. Thus, to suggest indeed how those two reflections mentioned in the preceding paragraph are inseparable, besides his wish to retain or recover his wonted companions, the doubter would also associate them and himself with new companions, I venture to say, as if in a figure, with Gentiles as well as with Jews, and this gives to doubt, or to those who experience it and adequately use it, a most significant rôle in the evolution of society, the rôle of mediation between old friends and new, between the past and the future, the narrow life and the broader and deeper life, what is conservative and what is progressive; but at least for the present it is again enough if we see that doubt, not only by its personal losses gives the motive, but also by its removal of barriers gives the larger possibility of society.

And, in addition to the company of nature and the company of man, doubt, springing as it does from man's sense of insufficiency, seeks also the company of God; yet not of the God of any theology. As here conceived, God is that which lies at the back of nature, and at the back of man in the sense of being in character broader and deeper than either of these, and quite superior to any difference between them; he is the single, all-inclusive, wholly indeterminate reality upon which the doubter depends, and must depend; he is as nameless and unspeakable as he is indeterminate and all-inclusive, and he is real and perfect only as so nameless. To theology, God is determinate; to doubt, imperfect if determinate. At times, perhaps only half in earnest, or at least not clearly knowing if he is in earnest or if he wishes others to think him so, the doubter speaks of nature as his God, of the hills, or the fields, or the sea, or the sky, or the busy street as his church, or the great book of the universe as his Bible. At times, with the deepest emotion and with open avowal, nature and God are fully one to him, and the poetry, or the science, or the philosophy, to which his doubting leads him, is veritably a religious revelation. But always his doubting, as he knows it, as he is honest with it, is an appeal, not merely to nature as physically a powerful agent in the life he is pursuing, nor to others like himself who, by sharing, may lighten his distress and enhance his final victory, but also to a full, inclusive experience; to a life, perhaps like his own, yet indeterminately deeper than any he has known; to a mind and a heart, such as he knows must be present in that which surrounds him and moves within him, in knowledge more enlightened and in emotion more inspired, than his doubting mind and faltering heart have ever been; and such a life or such a mind or heart, whatever name it be called by, is God. Can mind appeal to anything but mind, or heart to anything but heart? And doubt—can it be doubt without the appeal?