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
But doubt, which is thus social and imbued with a living sympathy, and
which though requiring sacrifice does not destroy belief, but only makes
belief active and reality an achievement, may be viewed here in still
another way. It shows mankind using or spending [p.258] instead of
either hoarding or throwing away any of the resources of knowledge and
faith, of developed habit and personal association, which life
accumulates. Some doubters, as men say in the business world, invest
what they have; some speculate. Some are conservative, even timorous;
some are very rash. Yet doubt as expenditure is necessary to all who
would enjoy the proper, natural increase of their possessions, and while
the rash, be they transgressors or reformers, sensualists or
materialists, or equally impractical idealists, at a throw may win or
lose great riches of mind or spirit, the timorous and
ultra-conservative, the "practical" and conventional, are not less
dependent on chance. There are the new rich, too, and the aristocratic
poor, and both remind us strongly that the real use of what we have is
not only a duty, but also a very sober duty. To hoard blindly or spend
rashly is to risk unwisely, perhaps to lose all, or, if to win, to win
idly; while to use well, to doubt clearly and honestly, to doubt even in
one's belief, to doubt only for fuller meaning, for broader and deeper
life, for richer companionship, is personally to earn lasting spiritual
treasure.
Modern science, whose knowledge comprises merely working hypotheses, the
means to truth, not truth itself, or if truth, then only a living,
growing truth, affords one of the best examples of this. Modern science
is a great faith, a great belief, but only because it is a life, not a
status or possession, only because it is a constant spending, a constant
using of knowledge, that earns interest, even compound interest, as
regularly as the years go by. And experience in [p.259] general, as well
as science, is also a great belief, and also only because always
doubting and so always using and always earning.
Doubt, in a word, is more than a necessity of experience; it is
distinctly a duty. Experience itself is but another name for that hard
master who says to every unprofitable servant: "Thou wicked and slothful
servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I
did not scatter; thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the
bankers, and at my coming I should have received back my own with
interest. Take ye away therefore the talent from him and give it unto
him that hath the ten talents."
II.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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