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
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 [p.026] 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, [p.027] 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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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