THE WISH TO BELIEVE.
MR. WILFRID WARD, the author of the impressive paper in the Nineteenth Century- of February, 1882, on "The Wish to Believe," in which he maintained that on matters of importance, where the reality of the belief is of the very essence of the wish, the hearty wish to believe, so far from making one credulous, is apt to make one incredulous of the desired evidence, continues, in the number of the Nineteenth Century which has just appeared, the further discussion of the same subject. The new paper is an important contribution to- wards the secret of sound judgment on great issues, Mr. Ward's chief contention being that personal indifference as to the result to be arrived at, such as is usually considered the best security for a juryman's office, though a good guarantee against those conspicuous and obvious perversions of judgment which would imperil the confidence of the public in the justice of our Courts, is by no manner of means the best security for either the highest impartiality or the highest keenness of insight. The essay is an admirable one, and full of strength and subtlety, but we think that it might have been somewhat improved, if Mr. Ward had kept quite distinct in his dialogue the influence exerted by a "wish to believe" on the impartiality of a man's judgment, and its influence on his materials for forming that judgment. There is one passage in which, as we understand it, he intimates his own opinion that you cannot properly separate the two,—that the effect of a strong previous bias of any kind in adding to the facts at your disposal on which the judgment depends, cannot legitimately be separated from the influence of the same bias in keeping your mind honest, or in exposing at to the danger of self-deception. That is the only point on which the present writer is inclined to disagree with Mr. Ward. We hold that the strong desire to establish
a certain conclusion on the sole condition that that conclusion should be the true one, is, as Mr. Wanl proved, in his previous essay, a very great security for impartiality of judgment,— that is, for a fall and distinct appreciation of all that weighs against that conclusion, as well as of all that weighs for it. It renders the mind sensitive, and even delicately sensitive, to that which gravely threatens its hopes, as well as to that which tends to confirm them. But very much less than this, the sort of wish to believe which is not at bottom limited by the condition that the thing believed shall be true, but would be more or less gratified by merely making the belief appear true to a number of indifferent judges, would be quite enough to make the mind of the wisher extremely sensitive to all sorts of considerations favourable to his wish; only it would not make it specially sensitive to those considerations which were calculated to make against its wish, as the passionate desire to establish the absolute truth of a certain belief would do. Take, for example, the desire of a great Old-Bailey barrister, such as the late Mr. Trollope delineated in the character of Mr. Chaffanbrass, to establish,—to the satisfaction of a jury,— his client's innocence of a crime of which he was accused. Mr. Trollope gives us a glimpse of such a state of mind in the very amusing novel called "Phineas Redux," —which we entirely differ, by the way, from that distinguished critic Mr. Henry James, in regarding as one written on Mr. l'rollope's lower level. Mr. Chaffanbrass is defending Phineas Finn on a charge of murder,—of which he is quite innocent, though a con- siderable accumulation of circumstantial evidence is brought against him,—and Mr. Chaffanbrass has been most acute in noting and most powerful in expounding every trivial indica- tion that appeared to show the weakness and inconsistency of the evidence against his client. He shows a lynx eye for every hint that favours his client's innocence, and a marvellous power of realising those hints, so as to make them vivid to the mind of the Judge and the jury. But when he retires to refresh himself in the middle of his address, this is what Mr. Trollope makes Mr. Chaffanbrass say to himself:—" He was telling himself
how quick may be the resolves of the eager mind,— for he was convinced that the idea of attacking Mr. Bonteen had occurred to Phineas Finn after he had displayed the life- preserver at the Club door." In other words, the strong desire to make a particular conclusion plausible, will give a good deal of the same sensitiveness of vision for the evidence likely to con- vince other men of that conclusion, which the sincere desire to believe this conclusion if it be true, and not to believe it unless it is true, will give for the evidence which really convinces the man's own self, whether in the direction of his wishes or otherwise. It was clear that, in the fictitious case related by Trollope with all the imaginative detail supplied by that great realist's ample stores of experience, the wish of Mr. Chaffanbrass to prove his client innocent had made his mind sensitive to every point which would be likely to tell with the jury in favour of that client; but that having no special wish to believe him innocent himself, his mind had not been sensitive to those points in the evidence which told either in favour of, or against, Phineas Finn's real innocence. And this, though it is the invented incident of a pure fiction, seems to us a perfectly true reflection of human nature.
The way in which "a wish to believe" tells upon the actual belief seems to us, then, something of this sort. It makes the mind sensitive to all evidence,—just as some chemical preparations make a glass plate sensitive to light,—tending in the direction of that wish. If the wish be only a wish to establish a plau- sible case, but not to convince yourself of the real soundness of that case if it be sound, the mind will become sensitive to these plausibilities of evidence, and to nothing beyond. It will hardly even look for the grounds of true conviction. But if it be true personal conviction which is earnestly desired, then the mind will become sensitive to everything which either aids, or stands seriously in the way of, true conviction. If you want true convic- tion, the insurmountable obstacles (if they be insurmountable) in the way of that true conviction will be as vividly photographed upon the mind as the evidence for the conclusion you desire. A man who eagerly desired to think his son innocent, would be as utterly unable to attenuate the effect on his mind of what tended to convince him of his son's guilt, as he would to attenuate the effect of what tended to convince him of his son's innocence. The "wish to believe" renders the mind sensitive to evidence just so far as that wish goes,—to evidence likely to convince or puzzle others, if the wish only is to set up an effective case,—to
all the evidence that comes within reach of your own inner judg- ment, if the wish is to obtain a genuine and assured belief of your own. What we suggest, then, is this,—that a wish either to make others believe, or to believe heartily oneself, affects the result by rendering the mind which entertains it specially sensi- tive to all evidence likely to sway the judgment whether of others or of yourself as to the character of that belief, but that it is not in the power of any mere anxiety to get up a plausible defence for one side of a case, to render the judgment sound and impartial. That can only be done by such a wish to believe, if the belief be true, as will impress the mind as much with all that tells against the belief, as it will with all that tells in its favour.
Some one, however, will certainly be found to ask Mr. Ward, Why do you insist on the wish to believe, if the belief be true, as the best guarantee of impartial investigation? Why do you not rather put it thus : that the wish should be to find the truth, whether the truth be in the direction of faith, or in the direction of scepticism? What would you think of a historical investigator who desired to make out a case, say, for Crom- well, if he honestly could, without ignoring any scrap of good evidence against Cromwell's character, instead of simply wishing earnestly to make out the truth, whether that truth branded Cromwell's character, or cleared it?' Mr. Ward has not yet come upon any discussion of this question, but we should be quite prepared to maintain that a wish to believe something that has kindled the imagination and stirred the heart—whether in relation to a human character or a divine faith—on con- dition that one can honestly and fully believe it without hiding from oneself the force of any of the evidence against it, is a far better guarantee for impartiality of judgment than what is commonly called an impartial desire to find out the truth, on whatever side the truth may lie. And we should justify our view of the matter thus. If you wish to believe in some vision which kindles the imagination and stirs the heart, on condition only that that belief is true, you start with a definite clue as well to all that tells in favour of that belief as to all that tells against it. If you start with a mere abstract resolution to find out the truth, on whatever side it may lie, you have no such clue ; you have to balance one fact against another, to set off this evidence against that, without any sufficient motive-power to lead you straight to the critical points. It is perfectly true that if you start with a "wish to believe," and find out that your wish is idle, and that all the important evidence goes the other way, you start with a false clue, historically speaking. But a false clue historically speaking is often a true clue morally speaking, and leads you much sooner and more directly to the conviction that you did start with a false assumption, than a mere abstract desire to find the truth would do. To verify this, let us ask whether an honest wish to "disbelieve" will be as good a help to a just view, as is an honest wish to believe. Of course, a wish to dis- believe may often be a wish to believe in another shape, as a wish to disbelieve in Cromwell's hypocrisy would be a wish to believe in Cromwell's honesty of purpose. But we mean by a wish to believe, a wish to prove the truth of some vision which has kindled the imagination and stirred the heart; and by the wish to disbelieve, a wish to get rid of a vision which has awed the imagination and oppressed the heart. Well, so defined, we deny altogether that a wish to disbelieve is any help to true im- partiality of judgment, as a wish to believe would be. A bad man, for instance, might wish to disbelieve in the purity and goodness of a friend's character which he might regard as a sort of reproach to himself. Such a wish to disbelieve, however sincere, would never render his mind highly sen- sitive to all the grounds which made his disbelief irrational, though the wish to believe honestly in the purity and truth of any character, would certainly render the mind sen- sitive to every consideration which was clearly unfavourable to the higher view of that character, as well as to those which favoured it. The wish to get rid of an upbraiding suggestion does not quicken the mind to anything that tells in favour of that upbraiding suggestion; the wish to justify a genuine feeling of reverence, does quicken the mind to the trace of anything which honestly tells against that reverence.
We come, then, to this conclusion,—that it is of the very essence of what we may call a. generous desire, to make us face honestly all that runs counter to that desire ; while it is of the very essence of an ungenerous desire to blind us to all that runs counter to that desire. The wish to believe, even if it leads to disbelief, leads to disbelief by an exalted path, which only ends in disbelief because the heart had fixed on some mis- taken object of reverence, the reverence itself being all the while due, though due in some different quarter. The wish to dis- believe, on the contrary, leads direct to disbelief by a mean and ignoble path, which is even more likely to land one in a mistaken disbelief, than in a just disbelief. The guidance in the "wish to believe" in something noble, is even greater and more effectual than the guidance of the mere wish to find abstract truth ; for the latter, being necessarily wholly undefined until the truth is found, sheds no ideal light on the path of search, while the wish to believe in something noble and above oneself, even if it tarn out in the end a mistaken wish as regards its special object, certainly does. The ideal rays of a high aspiration render the mind sensitive to the true character of the search, even though the wish to believe should end sadly in disappointment.
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