LECTURE X.

SCEPTICISM AS A HABIT.

SCEPTICISM, if we look at its derivation [oxénтоμаι = "to look about," or "to look for one's self"] and first use, has nothing in it that can fairly be called wrong, or liable to objection. To look carefully at an object before us in order to form a right estimate of it, to test it by some experiment or proof before we trust it, whether the object be physical, or food, or a particular act, or principle of action, or something offered us as truth in science, philosophy, or religion, is an instinct of wisdom; and, as preparatory to something to follow, worthy only of praise. Scripture even commands it to Christians: "Prove all things: hold fast that which is good."

And yet scepticism, I need hardly say, actually describes a most serious wrong, a malady perverting and corrupting all that is best in human nature. The title of my lecture will show you that I do not consider this wrong to spring from the object to which scepticism attaches itself-so that, while innocent or even praiseworthy in regard to some matters, it must be condemned in connection with others-for I say: "Scepticism as a habit." And I say that the habit of holding one's judgment in reserve, of suspending and indefinitely deferring our decision in cases where truth and duty are plain, is one dangerous to real sagacity and energy of character. Few persons can bring home to themselves the full significance of what we call "habit," and especially how it will wrap

itself like a garment (a sense the word itself often bears) around the soul and even body of a man. This means that a habit-doing the same thing again that we have done before in a given case-will, if unregulated and unchecked, attach itself to other cases where it is less appropriate, or wholly unsuitable. Thus because a man has hesitated long, and come to a slow decision in a matter of great difficulty, he will have a tendency, which may require a vigorous will to throw off, to hesitate where he should be prompt, and to defer action where action is much to be preferred to deliberation.

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Thus the provisional suspense of judgment recommended by Descartes and others as the true beginning of philosophy, we may allow, or even commend, as no more than a passing phase of the individual's mind in his search for truth. Of this Kant says, "It is not a permanent resting-place for human reason." To consider, to suspend one's judgment, to lay aside preconceptions, to pause, to examine, are therefore merely preliminaries, in a matter of importance, for vigorous, and, it may be, unrelaxing exertion, where further reflection will probably be difficult. Every earnest, superior mind yields to this reflective delay only with the purpose of finding some worthy decision. Plato even uses the verb from which "scepticism" is formed to indicate the arriving at this conclusion. Exhorting a young man tempted to a great crime by bad example, he tells him to flee from the evil company, to try "expiatory rites," to "consider" (which here means "firmly believe ") "that death is more honorable than life" stained with such a blot.

The words of the Athenian sage descriptive of careful examination, followed by prompt and vigorous action, are as applicable to a Christian tempted by speculative doubts or practical snares, at times spread for him by fel

1 καλλίω Θάνατον σκεψάμενος ing come to a conclusion. Attic writἀπαλλάττου τοῦ βίου.—Platon. ers were not accustomed to use the De Legibus, IX., 1. The past parti- present and imperfect of 6×έTTOciple σκέψαμενος indicates the hay- μαι.

low-Christians, as to an educated heathen walking by the light of nature alone, but still wishing to obey his conscience.

The strong and healthy sense of Socrates is said to have beaten back the tide of scepticism in the schools of philosophy for a hundred years, even until the Socratic impulse in Aristotle had been exhausted. Aristotle, whose acuteness surpassed that of the most thorough-going sceptic, likewise uses doubt for a constructive, not destructive end,' and so treats of "the utility of doubt," and what "we ought first to doubt of," and says, "The success of philosophy depends on the art of doubting well." This most acute of reasoners is best qualified to teach us where to put an end to doubt. "A principle," he says, "which one must be in possession of who understands any entity whatever, this is not an hypothesis." Doubts on such a point, he says, "are similar to one's doubting whether we now sleep or are awake." The following are cases where doubt is inadmissible: "It is impossible for the same inquirer to suppose that at the same time the same thing should be and not be." Again: "Causes are first principles." "That is called a cause from which, as inherent, anything is produced;" whence, a cause "is the first principle of change or of rest; as, for instance, the designing cause . and, generally speaking, the forming of that which is being formed, and that capable of effecting a change of that which is undergoing a change.' "There is something which always moves the things that are in motion, and the first imparter of motion is itself immovable." 2

Thus did he who was best qualified to doubt scientifically set up the barriers to doubt. He knew the excesses of the sophists that had gone before him, and he anticipated the aberrations of those that would appear in the

'It is a saying characteristic of Στὸ πρῶτον κινουν ακίνητον Aristotle's strong sense that "a man's auró.-Aristotle, Metaphysics, III., mind was organized to discover 3; II., 4; III., 8. truth."

future. Protagoras had dissolved knowledge into individual and momentary opinion: "Man is the measure of all things." Gorgias denied the possibility of knowledge. Scepticism took the form of "a thorough-going impeachment of man's power to know." Arcesilaus, a later

Academic, said, "We know nothing, not even this itself, that we know nothing." The Sceptics gave various names to this condition: άrapatia, "rest," "freedom from disturbance;" nox", "reserve of judgment;" appepía, ἐποχη, "equilibrium;" and their maxim was ovder μalλor, μᾶλλον, "One statement is as good as another."

Such statements, if viewed seriously, look like an abnegation of reason, and the worship of paralysis. It is probable, however, that what looks like an unqualified denunciation of reason was at first a lively invective against the uncertainty of physical science, with which the first efforts of philosophy were chiefly employed. Self-contradiction and increasing perplexity marked these researches as they advanced from Thales and the Eleatic school to the various theories of Leucippus, Heraclitus, Democritus, and the rest, till nature seemed to have no order; then reason turned to prey upon itself. The most alarming result of this was seen when the scepticism engendered by false science "passed, in a less reputable generation, into a corroding moral scepticism, which recognized no good but pleasure, and no right but might." Unlimited scepticism has been found in every age to take this direction. It has been noted that one of the earliest of the amorous poets in the north of France—a school that lapsed into the "most revolting sensuality "--was Abélard the Schoolman. Later developments in this direction need not be specified; the sceptic and the libertine, Montaigne and Rabelais, are linked together as inevitably as the negative and the positive electricity of the battery. Not even the enlightenment of our boasted science, the hard common-sense that scorns scholastic subtleties, can 'Ency. Brit., XXI., 329.

'Hallam's Literature of Europe, Pt. I., Ch. I., § 36.

protect the sophist of the nineteenth century from the worst follies of his brethren in ancient Greece. Still there is something peculiarly revolting in hearing an educated Englishman, like Mr. Mill, say in cold blood: "There may be worlds in which two and two make five, in which parallel lines meet, in which a straight line may return upon itself and inclose a space, and in which there may be effects without a cause."

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We conceive it to be far more creditable for a man to feel and to own, as did Hume, that his state of universal doubt is a "malady," "philosophical melancholy and delirium." And so, though Hume forces himself to say, when elaborating his sceptical theory, that there is no proof of "an external world independent of our perception," and that "cause is not a real relation, but only a mental habit of belief," etc., yet in conversation and in writing on other subjects he ignored without scruple such unnatural speech, and excused his inconsistency by saying, "I must yield. to the current of nature: nature compels me to judge as well as to breathe and feel." Mr. Arthur Balfour, a modern follower of Hume, frankly owns that "the practical foundations of our convictions" about "science and theology" do not rest on "rational grounds of conviction," but on "a kind of inward inclination or impulse."3 This is a formal abandonment of the supposition that scepticism is the peculiar enemy of religion. It is, in truth, the enemy of knowledge and mental soundness.

We have heretofore strongly insisted that the religion of Christ has ever been the kind foster-mother of all real science, and of whatever can be regarded as an effective instrument in human education. One proof of this is, that it gives an account of the condition of human nature that is verifiable by facts, and an intelligible reason for the glory and the weakness of that nature; that it offers solid grounds of hope to man for regaining his better

1See McCosh, Christianity and Positivism, Lect. VI., p. 175.

Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding.

'Defence of Philosophic Doubt, 1879.