PROFESSOR CLIFFORD ON THE SIN OF CREDULITY.
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD, continuing his ethical disquisitions in the Contemporary Review for January, dilates with much unction and more eloquence on the sin of credulity. "If I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence," he says, "there may be no great harm done by the mere belief ; it may be true, after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that 1make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough, but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them ; for then it must sink back into savagery: The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and
consequent support of false beliefs Men speak the truth to one another when each reveres the truth in his own mind and in the other's mind; but how shall my friend revere the truth in my mind when I myself am careless about it, when 1 believe things because I want to believe them, and because they are comforting and pleasant? Will he not learn to cry Peace !' to me when there is no peace? By such a course I shall surround myself with a thick atmosphere of falsehood and fraud, and in that I must live. It may matter little to me, in my cloud-castle of sweet illusions and darling lies, but it matters much to Man, that I have made my neighbours ready to deceive. The credulous man is father to the liar and the cheat, he lives in the bosom of this his family, and it is no marvel if he should become even as they are. So closely are duties knit together, that whoso shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." This is eloquent and almost evangelical in its tone, but we think Professor Clifford was hardly justifiable in illustrating his position of the wickedness of credu- lity, as he does, by instances such as that of the shipowner who persuades himself that his old ship is still seaworthy, without satisfying himself by evidence that it is so, and who, when the ship goes down with all its crew, gets the insurance on it paid, and con- tents himself with the reflection that after all he acted on his own inner conviction, though his conviction proved to be mistaken. The weak point of such illustrations is that the self-interest of the man is in this case engaged on the side of his credulity, and not against it,—a circumstance which should always put us morally on our guard against not only credulity, but incredulity, or any other attitude of mind which it would be for our own interest for us to assume. Put the case the other way. Your whole fortune is em- barked in a given enterprise. Some one gives you most unwelcome but, on the surface, plausible information that the enterprise is hollow, and founded on a cheat. You know that if this be true you are ruined, and also that if it be false, but be believed to be true, you are ruined by the panic which it will excite among others ; it is therefore your interest to be incredulous, for by extinguishing the rumour at first you retain the chance of sustaining others' confidence, while if you give any credit to it, you create the panic by which others indeed may be saved, but you must be ruined.
Incredulity," therefore, is the prompting of self-interest, and in such a case, incredulity is as wrong as Professor Clifford's cre- dulity, and for the same reason. It is the tainted motive which makes the credulity and the incredulity alike evil ; while with a better motive either might be generous and noble. If instead of being a shipowner, you were the friend of the shipowner, and intending to sail in his ship, and from your absolute confidence
in your friend's assurances, had rejected at once as absolutely in- credible any question of the seaworthiness of the ship,—then, instead of branding your credulity with the character of a supersti- tious self-deception, the worst even Professor Clifford could say of it would be that it was a generous mistake. And like manner, if the person informed of the false character of the supposed enter- prise had been, not one whose capital was already at stake, but one on the point of investing, yet still able to withdraw his investment, and if the motive cf his incredulity had been, not his selfish fears for his own property, but his complete trust in the probity of another, we should have said the same in his case. What we complain of in Professor Clifford is that he has weighted his denunciations of credulity by introducing an altogether false issue into his illustra- tions. And we maintain, in opposition to him, that if we free our minds from the misleading influence of his illustrative commentary, and apply his doctrine to cases in which no such taint of false motive is discernible, we shall find that his doctrine is rejected by the consensus even of that non-religious society to whose interests Professor Clifford habitually appeals, as if they constituted the true and only standard of ethics.
Let us take a sufficiently notorious case. The biographer of Columbus makes it evident to us, on the testimony of the son of the great navigator, testimony carefully substantiated by reference to the notes and memoranda collected by his father, that the mag- nificent enterprise which Columbus conducted to a successful issue was really the offspring of two beliefs, for which he had hardly any evidence, and which were, in fact, illusions. "It is apparent," says Mr. Washington Irving, "that the grand argu-
ment which induced Columbus to his enterprise was that the most eastern part of Asia known to the ancients could not be separated from the Azores by more than a third of the circumference of the globe ; that the intervening space must, in a great measure, be filled up by the unknown residue of Asia ; and that if the circumference of the world was, as he believed, less than was generally supposed, the Asiatic shores could easily be attained by a moderate voyage to the west. It is singular how much the success of this great undertaking depended upon two happy errors,—the imaginary extent of Asia to the east, and the iupposed smallness of the earth." And again, when in his voyage, Columbus and his pilots, to the letters' great dismay, found the magnetic needle varying more and more from the Pole star, Columbus explained it by assuring them that the true direction of the magnetic needle was not to the Pole star, but to the invisible Pole round which it circled. Here, again, it is certain that Colum- bus explained away most dangerous and paralysing terrors by a very ingenious but false guess, for which he had no evidence worthy of the name. Now, what language would Professor Clifford apply to these two mistaken beliefs of Columbus? Would he use the language contained in this article, and say he was guilty of a piece of mental gymnastic which did "this great wrong to Man," that Columbus "made himself credulous?" Would Professor Clifford ask concerning him, how could his friends revere truth in the mind of Columbus, when Columbus was himself careless about it, when he "surrounded himself with a thick atmosphere of falsehood and fraud," cried "Peace!" to his mariners when there was no peace ; when he "entrenched himself in hi a little castle of sweet illusions and darling lies ?" —would Professor Clifford maintain that in these acts of cre- dulity Columbus was making himself "the father of the liar and the cheat," so that "living in the liosom of this his family, it would have been no wonder if he had been as they?" Would he say that it matters not the least that Columbus succeeded in his enterprise, since in eating upon it, and carrying it through, he deceived himself by illusions which might far more probably have led him astray? Would he say that Columbus was not inno- cent in thus deluding himself and others, but only net found out? Would he assert, as he does in relation to the subject of his own illus- tration, that "the question of right or wrong has to do with the origin of his belief, not the matter of it ; not what it was, but how he got it ; not whether it turned out to be true or false, but whether he had a right to believe such evidence as was before him." We take it, Professor Clifford has too much good-sense to say any of these things. They are only applicable at all, not to acts of pure credulity,—even though false credulity,—but to acts of interested credulity, when a man ought to have been put on his guard against himself by knowing well the swerve or bias given to his interior beliefs by his own interests. Yet Professor Clifford's argument, if it is worth anything at all, is applicable to all acts of belief on evidence which the believer, when in'the exer- cise of his coolest judgment, would have reason to 'think really inadequate. We take the case of Columbus,tbecauseawe regard that case as in a very high degree illustrative of the sort of faith which is
grounded not on what Professor Clifford calls evidence, but on something deeper and better. We have seen that Columbus's principal assigned grounds for his belief that he would succeed in his enterprise were false grounds, but no one could doubt that the general intuition of genius which gave him the pertinacity and the sanguineness of conviction essential to success, was never- theless legitimate,—and was the true forecast of those tendrils of the reason which far oftener originate the discovery of great and living truths than what our Professor means by "evidence." Now, as it seems to us, there is even in ordinary people who have no genius, some power of forecast of the same sort, on matters however of a very different kind ;—and that with them the true secret of forecast is the affections. Love appreciates character more rapidly and far more truly than the intellect, and though it, too, like genius, may select very erroneous grounds on which to base its confession of faith,—the intuitions of love, like the intuitions of genius are often true, when the account which it renders to itself of its intuitions is false. Now it seems to us the great aim, as well as tendency, of Professor Clifford's ethical writings to encourage, even in subjects most closely intertwined with the conscience and the affections, that spirit of severe incredulity which would not only extinguish, as he desires, all the highest faiths, but also all the deepest and noblest human ties. Nothing can be leas true than that the intuitions of a child,—sometimes even of a dog,—respecting the qualities of a character concerning which there is no experience to guide us, are utterly untrust- worthy, although they axe, and must seem to those who trust them, to be founded in a deep credulity. How mischievous, how credulous, how superstitious, according to the dictum of Pro- fessor Clifford's paper, is the child's indignation against one who accuses his father of commercial dishonesty ! He has had no sort of experience of the wide divergence between men's domestic and professional consciences. He knows hardly anything except that his father has often told him what turned out to be true, and sometimes done so when it was obviously a painful task. The leap from such a little plot of experience as this to the large generalisation that the same father would not cheat a complete stranger, is, as we all know, a tremendous leap in the dark. And yet who can doubt that many a child makes it not in the dark, but in the full light of a guiding affection ; while many another would shrink from making it from equally good, but quite as mysterious, instincts, which would tell him it was wrong. The ethics of belief could scarcely have been more meagrely and more mis- leadingly discussed than they are by Professor Clifford. We venture to say that the best and most trustworthy of all our beliefs are founded on evidence of which we cannot give even a brief summary to ourselves, and that if we attempt this, we shall wander as far from the true grounds of our belief, as Columbus himself did, when he gave the two false reasons on which he chiefly rested his belief in the possibility of his enterprise.
When we compare with Professor Clifford's "ethics of belief" such predictions as our Lord's that he was come to divide father from son, and mother from daughter, to send not peace on earth, but a sword, to bring persecution on his disciples, and yet to give them a great and lasting victory over the world, we cannot but wonder at the credulity of the man who preaches the gospel of incredulity as the great corner-stone of the new ethics. Why, if, as Professor Clifford holds, a true ethic is the doctrine which fits a human society to grow stronger, more united, more fit to battle with the hostility of nature, and with the perils of anarchy, then we should say that the first requisite of a true ethic is a commanding faith which goes far beyond the bounds of what Professor Clifford means by "evidence," on the strength of the forecast due to its conscience and its affections. It was what Professor Clifford would call Christ's credulity which gave a new bond to human society, and assured the "little flock," whom he sent forth as "sheep amongst wolves," of ultimate conquest. It was precisely the same sort of credulity on a very much minuter scale which gave to Augustine, to Savonarola, to Luther, to all the great Reformers, their confidence in the divine character of their cause, and their power to bring it to a triumphant conclusion. Without such credulity, there would have been little or no reconstructive force in human society after the great revolutions had spent their force. What draws human beings together and makes them into an organic whole is the great attraction of a common faith, and if intellectual truth be essential, as it is, to progress, moral and spiritual truth,—which is the truth seized by the magic of the conscience and affections,—is stall more necessary to order and unity of any sort. Professor
Clifford strikes at the very basis of his own ethics, when he calls all belief which is either not founded on producible evidence at all, or when challenged, produces, as Columbus produced, evidence for itself which is not worth the paper on which it is written,—credulity, and brands it as both mischievous and dis- honest. The simple fact is that the best and most binding faiths we have, faiths not only at the basis of popular religion, but also at the basis of domestic strength and peace, are founded on precisely such evidence as this at which Professor Clifford levels his most bitter shafts.
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