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
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 [p.274] 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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