The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinker — John Shaqi
The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinkerLloyd, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Philosophy
The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinker
Lloyd, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Belief and doubt; Philosophy -- Introductions
of acts is more or less directly involved, whatever one does. As to the
tentative nature of purpose, which seems the only other point here that
can possibly require illustration, the right we all [p.013] reserve to
change our minds in the different affairs of life tells its own story.
We never do do, or can do, exactly what we consciously would do; and
recognizing this, men, as well as women, insist on the right of a change
of mind, and sometimes even of conscious misrepresentation or of
disparity between their seeming and their being in thought or in deed.
That such a claim has its dangers does not now concern us; it has also
its opportunities; but the fact of it and the ground for it are quite
evident. Even jurisprudence, for which loyalty to established and
visible forms is peculiarly sacred, has its ways, direct and indirect,
of recognizing that purposes develop, that the returns are never all in,
that any purpose or meaning must sooner or later assume a new form, and
so may even now be other than it seems. Bequests for institutions, for
example, are allowed to continue in force, although, with the demands of
a more enlightened day, the formal conditions under which they were made
have been openly violated. In short--for it all comes to this--"Not the
letter, but the spirit," is an inevitable comment, or at least an
inevitable feeling about everything that is done. A man vaults a fence,
and then, even if he get over fairly well, vaulting is not what it was
for him. He may continue to use the old word, or the same arms and legs,
but with a changed meaning and a changed feeling of limb and muscle, and
so with a new purpose and a new body to control and modify his next
performance. And what is true for vaulting is true also for making boxes
or tables, for writing essays, for talking, for thinking, for founding
colleges or theological seminaries, or finally, for [p.014] what we so
indefinitely call living. An activity such as throughout its length and
breadth ours is, conscious activity that must for ever heed the call:
"Not the letter, but the spirit," an activity that never is, therefore,
and never can be without the elements of the game, since it must ever
wait on its own revealed consequences in order to grow into an
understanding of its real meaning; such an activity, among other things,
cannot but fasten doubt upon us as a most natural heritage. As man is
conscious, to doubt is human. Other things may be human, too, but doubt
is so certainly and conspicuously.
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