03.02 - Part 3, Chapter 2

CHAPTER II AUTHORITY AND REASON THIS group is perhaps best described by the term Authority, a word which by a sharp transition transports us at once into a stormier tract of speculation than we have been traversing in the last few pages, though, as my readers may be disposed to think, for that reason, perhaps, among others, a tract more nearly adjacent to theology and the proper subject-matter of these Notes. However this may be, it is, I am afraid, the fact that the discussion on which I am about to enter must bring us face to face with one problem, at least, of which, so far as I am aware, no entirely satisfactory solution has yet been reached; which certainly I cannot pretend to solve; which can, therefore, for the present only be treated in a manner provisional, and therefore unsatisfactory. Nor are these perennial and inherent difficulties the only obstacles we have to contend with. For the subject is, unfortunately, one familiar to discussion, and, like all topics which have been the occasion of passionate debate, it is one where party watchwords have exercised their perturbing and embittering influence.

It would be, perhaps, an exaggeration to assert that the theory of authority has been for three centuries the main battlefield whereon have met the opposing forces of new thoughts and old. But if so, it is only because, at this point at least, victory is commonly supposed long ago to have declared itself decisively in favour of the new. The very statement that the rival and opponent of authority is reason 1 seems to most persons equivalent to a declaration that the latter must be in the right, and the former in the wrong; while popular discussion and speculation have driven deep the general opinion that authority serves no other purpose in the economy of Nature than to supply a refuge for all that is most bigoted and absurd. The current theory by which these views are supported appears to be something of this kind. Everyone has a ’ right ’ to adopt any opinions he pleases. It is his ’ duty,’ before exercising this ’ right,’ critically to sift the reasons by which such opinions may be supported, and so to adjust the degree of his convictions that they shall accurately correspond with the evidences adduced in their favour. Authority, therefore, has no place among the legitimate causes of belief. If it appears among them, it is as an in-

1 It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to note that throughout this chapter I use Reason in its ordinary and popular, not in its transcendental, sense. There is no question here of the Logos or Absolute Reason. truder, to be jealously hunted down and mercilessly expelled. Reason, and reason only, can be safely permitted to mould the convictions of mankind. By its inward counsels alone should beings who boast that they are rational submit to be controlled.

Sentiments like these are among the commonplaces of political and social philosophy. Yet, looked at scientifically, they seem to me to be, not merely erroneous, but absurd. Suppose for a moment a community of which each member should deliberately set himself to the task of throwing off so far as possible all prejudices due to education; where each should consider it his duty critically to examine the grounds whereon rest every positive enactment and every moral precept which he has been accustomed to obey; to dissect all the great loyalties which make social life possible, and all the minor conventions which help to make it easy; and to weigh out with scrupulous precision the exact degree of assent which’ in each particular case the results of this process might seem to justify. To say that such a community, if it acted upon the opinions thus arrived at, would stand but a poor chance in the struggle for existence is to say far too little. It could never even begin to be; and if by a miracle it was created, it would without doubt immediately resolve itself into its constituent elements. For consider by way of illustration the case of Morality. If the right and the duty of private judgment be universal, it must be both the privilege and the business of every man to subject the maxims of current morality to a critical examination; and unless the examination is to be a farce, every man should bring to it a mind as little warped as possible by habit and education, or the unconscious bias of foregone conclusions. Picture, then, the condition of a society in which the successive generations would thus in turn devote their energies to an impartial criticism of the ’traditional’ view. What qualifications, natural or acquired, for such a task we are to attribute to the members of this emancipated community I know not. But let us put them at the highest. Let us suppose that every man and woman, or rather every boy and girl (for ought Reason to be ousted from her rights in persons under twenty-one years of age?), is endowed with the aptitude and training required to deal with problems like these. Arm them with the most recent methods of criticism, and set them down to the task of estimating with open minds the claims which charity, temperance and honesty, murder, theft and adultery respectively have upon the approval or disapproval of mankind. What the result of such an experiment would be, what wild chaos of opinions would result from this fiat of the Uncreating Word, I know not. But it might well happen that even before our youthful critics got so far as a rearrangement of the Ten Commandments, they might find themselves entangled in the preliminary question whether judgments conveying moral approbation and disapprobation were of a kind which reasonable beings should be asked to entertain at all; whether ’ right ’ and ’ wrong ’ were words representing anything more permanent and important than certain likes and dislikes which happen to be rather widely disseminated, and more or less arbitrarily associated with social and legal sanctions. I conceive it to be highly probable that the conclusions at which on this point they would arrive would be of a purely negative character. The ethical systems competing for acceptance would by their very numbers and variety suggest suspicions as to their character and origin. Here, would our students explain, is a clear presumption to be found on the very face of these moralisings that they were contrived, not in the interests of truth, but in the interests of traditional dogma. How else explain the fact, that while there is no great difference of opinion as to what things are right or wrong, there is no semblance of agreement as to why they are right or why they are wrong. All authorities concur, for instance, in holding that it is wrong to commit murder. But one philosopher tells us that it is wrong because it is inconsistent with the happiness of mankind, and that to do anything inconsistent with the happiness of mankind is wrong. Another tells us that it is contrary to the dictates of conscience, and that everything which is contrary to the dictates of conscience is wrong. A third tells us that it is against the commandments of God, and that everything which is against the commandments of God is wrong. A fourth tells me that it leads to the gallows, and that, inasmuch as being hanged involves a sensible diminution of personal happiness, creatures who, like man, are by nature incapable of doing otherwise than seek to increase the sum of their personal pleasures and diminish the sum of their personal pains cannot, if they really comprehend the situation, do anything which may bring their existence to so distressing a termination.

Now whence, it would be asked, this curious mixture of agreement and disagreement? How account for the strange variety exhibited in the premises of these various systems, and the not less strange uniformity exhibited in their conclusions? Why does not as great a divergence manifest itself in the results arrived at as we undoubtedly find in the methods employed? How comes it that all these explorers reach the same goal, when their points of departure are so widely dispersed? Plainly but one plausible method of solving the difficulty exists. *The conclusions were in every case determined before the argument began, the goal was in every case settled before the travellers set out. There is here no surrender of belief to the inward guidance of unfettered reason. Rather is reason coerced to a foreordained issue by the external operation of prejudice and education, or by the rougher machinery of social ostracism and legal penalty. The framers of ethical systems are either philosophers who are unable to free themselves from the unfelt bondage of customary opinion, or advocates who find it safer to exercise their liberty of speculation in respect to premises about which nobody cares, than in respect to conclusions which might bring them into conflict with the police. So might we imagine the members of our emancipated community discussing the principles on which morality is founded. But, in truth, it were a vain task to work out in further detail the results of an experiment which, human nature being what it is, can never be seriously attempted. That it can never be seriously attempted is not, be it observed, because it is of so dangerous a character that the community in its wisdom would refuse to embark upon it. This would be a frail protection indeed. Not the danger of the adventure, but its impossibility, is our security. To reject all convictions which are not the products of free speculative investigation is, fortunately, an exercise of which humanity is in the strictest sense incapable. Some societies and some individuals may show more inclination to indulge in it than others. But in no condition of society and in no individual will the inclination be more than very partially satisfied. Always and everywhere our Imaginary Observer, contemplating from some external coign of vantage the course of human history, would note the immense, the inevitable, and on the whole the beneficent, part which Authority plays in the production of belief.

II This truth finds expression, and at first sight we might feel inclined to say recognition also, in such familiar commonplaces as that every man is the ’ product of the society in which he lives,’ and that ’ it is vain to expect him to rise much above the level of his age.’ But aphorisms like these, however useful as aids to a correct historical perspective, do not, as ordinarily employed, show any real apprehension of the verity on which I desire to insist. They belong to a theory which regards these social influences as clogs and hindrances, hampering the free movements of those who might under happier circumstances have struggled successfully towards the truth; or as perturbing forces which drive mankind from the even orbit marked out for it by reason. Reason, according to this view, is a kind of Ormuzd doing constant battle against the Ahriman of tradition and authority. Its gradual triumph over the opposing powers of darkness is what we mean by Progress. Everything which shall hasten the hour of that triumph is a gain; and if by some magic stroke we could extirpate, as it were in a moment, every cause of belief which was not also a reason, we should, it appears, be the fortunate authors of a reform in the moral world only to be paralleled by the abolition of pain and disease in the physical. I have already indicated some of the grounds which induce me to form a very different estimate of the part which reason plays in human affairs. Our ancestors, whose errors we palliate on account of their environment with a feeling of satisfaction, due partly to our keen appreciation of our own happier position and greater breadth of view, were not to be pitied because they reasoned little and believed much; nor should we necessarily have any particular cause for self-gratulation if it were true that we reasoned more and, it may be, believed less. Not thus has the world been fashioned. But, nevertheless, this identification of reason with all that is good among the causes of belief, and authority with all that is bad, is a delusion so gross and yet so prevalent that a moment’s examination into the exaggerations and confusions which lie at the root of it may not be thrown away. The first of these confusions may be dismissed almost in a sentence. It arises out of the tacit assumption that reason means right reason. Such an assumption, it need hardly be said, begs half the point at issue. Reason, for purposes of this discussion, can no more be made to mean right reason than authority can be made to mean legitimate authority. True, we might accept the first of these definitions, and yet deny that all right belief was the fruit of reason. But we could hardly deny the converse proposition, that reason thus defined must always issue in right belief. Nor need we be concerned to deny a statement at once so obvious and so barren. The source of error which has next to be noted presents points of much greater interest. Though it be true, as I am contending, that the importance of reason among the causes which produce and maintain the beliefs, customs, and ideals which form the groundwork of life has been much exaggerated, there can yet be no doubt that reason is, or appears to be, the cause over which we have the most direct control, or rather the one which we most readily identify with our own free and personal action. We are acted on by authority. It moulds our ways of thought in spite of ourselves, and usually unknown to ourselves. But when we reason we are the authors of the effect produced. We have ourselves set the machine in motion. For its proper working we are ourselves immediately responsible; so that it is both natural and desirable that we should concentrate our attention on this particular class of causes, even though we should thus be led unduly to magnify their importance in the general scheme of things.

I have somewhere seen it stated that the steamengine in its primitive form required a boy to work the valve by which steam was admitted to the cylinder. It was his business at the proper period of each stroke to perform this necessary operation by pulling a string; and though the same object has long since been attained by mechanical methods far simpler and more trustworthy, yet I have little doubt that until the advent of that revolutionary youth who so tied the string to one of the moving parts of the engine that his personal supervision was no longer necessary, the boy in office greatly magnified his functions, and regarded himself with pardonable pride as the most important, because the only rational, link in the chain of causes and effects by which the energy developed in the furnace was ultimately converted into the motion of the flywheel. So do we stand as reasoning beings in the presence of the complex processes, physiological and psychical, out of which are manufactured the convictions necessary to the conduct of life. To the results attained by their co-operation reason makes its slender contribution; but in order that it may do so effectively, it is beneficently decreed that, pending the evolution of some better device, reason should appear to the reasoner the most admirable and important contrivance in the whole mechanism. The manner in which attention and interest are thus unduly directed towards the operations, vital and social, which are under our direct control, rather than those which we are unable to modify, or can only modify by a very indirect and circuitous procedure, may be illustrated by countless examples. Take one from physiology. Of all the complex causes which co-operate for the healthy nourishment of the body, no doubt the conscious choice of the most wholesome rather than the less wholesome forms of ordinary food is far from being the least important. Yet, as it is within our immediate competence, we attend to it, moralise about it, and generally make much of it. But no man can by taking thought directly regulate his digestive secretions. We never, therefore, think of them at all until they go wrong, and then, unfortunately, to very little purpose. So it is with the body politic. A certain proportion (probably a small one) of the changes and adaptations required by altered surroundings can only be effected through the solvent action of criticism and discussion. How such discussion shall be conducted, what are the arguments on either side, how a decision shall be arrived at, and how it shall be carried out, are matters which we seem able to regulate by conscious effort and the deliberate adaptation of means to ends. We therefore unduly magnify the part they play in the furtherance of our interests. We perceive that they supply business to the practical politician, raw material to the political theorist; and we forget amid the buzzing of debate the multitude of incomparably more important processes, by whose undesigned co-operation alone the life and growth of the State are rendered possible.

There is, however, a third source of illusion, respecting the importance of reason in the actual conduct of human affairs, which well deserves the attentive study of those who, like our Imaginary Observer, are interested in the purely external and scientific investigation of the causes which produce belief. I have already in this chapter made reference to the ’ spirit of the age ’ as one form in which authority most potently manifests itself; and undoubtedly it is so. Dogmatic education in early years may do much. 1 The immediate pressure of domestic, social, scientific, ecclesiastical surroundings in the direction of specific beliefs may do even more. But the power of authority is never more subtle and effective than when it produces a psychological ’ atmosphere ’ or ’ climate ’ favourable to the life of certain modes of belief, unfavourable, and even fatal, to the life of others. Such ’ climates ’ may be widely diffused, or the reverse. Their range may cover a generation, an epoch, a whole civilisation, or it may be narrowed down to a sect, a family, even an individual. And as they may vary infinitely in respect to the extent of their influence, so also they may vary in respect to its intensity and quality. But whatever be their limits and whatever their character, their importance to the conduct of life, social and individual, cannot easily be overstated.

Consider, for instance, their effect on great classes of belief with which reasoning, were it only on account of their mass, is quite incompetent to deal. If all credible propositions, all propositions which somebody at some time had been able to believe, were only to be rejected after their claims had

1 1 may again remind the reader that the word ’ dogmatic ’ as used in these Notes has no special theological reference. been impartially tested by a strictly logical investigation, the intellectual machine would be overburdened, and its movements hopelessly choked by mere excess of material. Even such products as it could turn out would, as I conjecture (for the experiment has never been tried), prove but a motley collection, so diverse in design, so incongruous and ill-assorted, that they could scarcely contribute the fitting furniture of a well-ordered mind. What actually happens in the vast majority of cases is something very different. To begin with, external circumstances, mere conditions of time and place, limit the number of opinions about which anything is known, and on which, therefore, it is (so to speak) materially possible that reason can be called upon to pronounce a judgment. But there are internal limitations not less universal and not less necessary. Few indeed are the beliefs, even among those which come under his observation, which any individual for a moment thinks himself called upon seriously to consider with a view to their possible adoption. The residue he summarily disposes of, rejects without a hearing, or, rather, treats as if they had not even that primd facie claim to be adjudicated on which formal rejection seems to imply.

Now, can this process be described as a rational one? That it is not the immediate result of reasoning is, I think, evident enough. All would admit, for example, that when the mind is closed against the reception of any truth by ’ bigotry ’ or ’ inveterate prejudice,’ the effectual cause of the victory of error is not so much bad reasoning as something which, in its essential nature, is not reasoning at all. But there is really no ground for drawing a distinction as regards their mode of operation between the ’ psychological climates ’ which we happen to like and those of which we happen to disapprove. However various their character, all, I take it, work out their results very much in the same kind of way. For good or for evil, in ancient times and in modern, among savage folk and among civilised, it is ever by an identic process that they have sifted and selected the candidates for credence, on which reason has been afterwards called upon to pass judgment; and that process is one with which ratiocination has little or nothing directly to do. But though these ’ psychological climates ’ do not work through reasoning, may they not themselves, in many cases, be the products of reasoning? May they not, therefore, be causes of belief which belong, though it be only at the second remove, to the domain of reason rather than to that of authority? To the first of these questions the answer must doubtless be in the affirmative. Reasoning has unquestionably a great deal to do with the production of psychological climates. As ’ climates ’ are among the causes which produce beliefs, so are beliefs among the causes which produce ’ climates,’ and all reasoning, therefore, which culminates in belief may be, and indeed must be, at least indirectly concerned in the effects which belief develops. But are these results rational? Do they follow, I mean, on reason qua reason; or are they, like a schoolboy’s tears over a proposition of Euclid, consequences of reasoning, but not conclusions from it? In order to answer this question it may be worth while to consider it in the light of an example which I have already used in another connection and under a different aspect. It will be recollected that in a preceding chapter I considered Rationalism, not as a psychological climate, a well-characterised mood of mind, but as an explicit principle of judgment, in which the rationalising temper may for purposes of argument find definite expression. To Rationalism in the first of these senses to Rationalism, in other words, considered as a form of Authority I now revert; taking it as an incident specially suited to our purpose, not only because its meaning is well understood, but because it is found at our own level of intellectual development, and we can therefore study its origin and character with a kind of insight quite impossible when we are dealing with the ’ climates ’ which govern in so singular a fashion the beliefs of primitive races. These, too, may be, and I suppose are, to some extent, the products of reasoning. But the reasoning appears to us as arbitrary as the resulting ’ climates ’ are repugnant; and though we can note and classify the facts, we can hardly comprehend them with sympathetic understanding. With Rationalism it is different. How the discoveries of science, the growth of criticism, and the diffusion of learning should have fostered the rationalising temper seems intelligible to all, because all, in their different degrees, have been subject to these very influences. Not everyone is a rationalist; but everyone, educated or uneducated, is prepared to reject without further examination certain kinds of statement which, before the rationalising era set in, would have been accepted without difficulty by the wisest among mankind.

Now this modern mood, whether in its qualified or unqualified (i.e. naturalistic) form, is plainly no mere product of non-rational conditions, as the enumeration I have just given of its most conspicuous causes is sufficient to prove. Natural science and historical criticism have not been built up without a vast expenditure of reasoning, and (though for present purposes this is immaterial) very good reasoning, too. But are we on that account to say that the results of the rationalising temper are the work of reason? Surely not. The rationalist rejects miracles; and if you force him to a discussion, he may no doubt produce from the ample stores of past controversy plenty of argument in support of his belief. But do not therefore assume that his belief is the result of his argument. The odds are strongly in favour of argument and belief having both grown up under the fostering influence of his ’ psychological climate.’ For observe that precisely in the way in which he rejects miracles he also rejects witchcraft. Here there has been no controversy worth mentioning. The general belief in witchcraft has died a natural death, and it has not been worth anybody’s while to devise arguments against it. Perhaps there are none. But, whether there be or not, no logical axe was required to cut down a plant which had not the least chance of flourishing in a mental atmosphere so rigorous and uncongenial as that of rationalism; and accordingly no logical axe has been provided. The belief in mesmerism, however, supplies in some ways a more instructive case than the belief either in miracles or witchcraft. Like these, it found in rationalism a hostile influence. But, unlike these, it could call in almost at will the assistance of what would now be regarded as ocular demonstration. For two generations, however, this was found insufficient. For two generations the rationalistic bias proved sufficiently strong to pervert the judgment of the most distinguished observers, and to incapacitate them from accepting what under more favourable circumstances they would have called the ’ plain evidence of their senses.’ So that we are here presented with the curious spectacle of an intellectual mood or temper, whose origin was largely due to the growth of the experimental sciences, making it impossible for those affected to draw the simplest inference, even from the most conclusive experiments. This is an interesting case of the conflict between authority and reason, because it illustrates the general truth for which I have been contending, with an emphasis that would be impossible if we took asour example some worn-out vesture of thought, threadbare from use, and strange to eyes accustomed to newer fashions. Rationalism, in its turn, may be predestined to suffer a like decay; but in the meanwhile it forcibly exemplifies the part played by authority in the formation of beliefs. If rationalism be regarded as a non-rational effect of reason and a non-rational cause of belief, the same admission will readily be made about all other intellectual climates; and that rationalism should be so regarded is now, I trust, plain to the reader. The only results which reason can claim as hers by an exclusive title are of the nature of logical conclusions; and rationalism, in the sense in which I am now using the word, is not a logical conclusion, but an intellectual temper. The only instruments which reason, as such, can employ are arguments; and rationalism is not an argument, but an impulse towards belief, or disbelief. So that, though rationalism, like other ’ psychological climates,’ is doubtless due, among other causes, to reason, it is not on that account a rational product; and though in its turn it produces beliefs, it is not on that account a rational cause. From the preceding considerations it may, I think, be fairly concluded, firstly, that reason is not necessarily, nor perhaps usually, dominant among the immediate causes which produce a particular ’ psychological climate.’ Secondly, that the efficiency of such a ’ climate ’ in promoting or destroying beliefs is quite independent of the degree to which reason has contributed to its production; and, thirdly, that however much the existence of the ’climate’ may be due to reason, its action on beliefs, be it favourable or hostile, is in its essential nature wholly non-rational.

IV The most important source of error on this subject remains, however, to be dealt with; and it arises directly out of that jurisdiction which in matters of belief we can hardly do otherwise than recognise as belonging to Reason by a natural and indefeasible title. No one finds (if my observations in this matter are correct) any serious difficulty in attributing the origin of other people’s beliefs, especially if he disaagree with them, to causes which are not reasons. That interior assent should be produced in countless cases by custom, education, public opinion, the contagious convictions of countrymen, family, party, or Church, seems natural, and even obvious. That but a small number, at least of the most important and fundamental beliefs, are held by persons who could give reasons for them, and that of this small number only an inconsiderable fraction are held in consequence of the reasons by which they are nominally supported, may perhaps be admitted with no very great difficulty. But it is harder to recognise that this law is not merely, on the whole, beneficial, but that without it the business of the world could not possibly be carried on; nor do we allow, without reluctance and a sense of shortcoming, that in our own persons we supply illustrations of its operation quite as striking as any presented to us by the rest of the world.

Now this reluctance is not the result of vanity, nor of any fancied immunity from weaknesses common to the rest of mankind. It is, rather, a direct consequence of the view we find ourselves compelled to take of the essential character of reason and of our relations to it. Looked at from the outside, as one among the complex conditions which produce belief, reason appears relatively insignificant and ineffectual; not only appears so, but must be so, if human society is to be made possible. Looked at from the inside, it claims by an inalienable title to be supreme. Measured by its results it may be little; measured by its rights it is everything. There is no problem it may not investigate, no belief which it may not assail, no principle which it may not test. It cannot, even by its own voluntary act, deprive itself of universal jurisdiction, as, according to a once fashionable theory, primitive man, on entering the social state, contracted himself out of his natural rights and liberties. On the contrary, though its claims may be ignored, they cannot be repudiated; and even those who shrink from the criticism of dogma as a sin, would probably admit that they do so because it is an act forbidden by those they are bound to obey; do so, that is to say, nominally at least, for a reason which, at any moment, if it should think fit, reason itself may reverse.

Why, under these circumstances, we are moved to regard ourselves as free intelligences, forming our opinions solely in obedience to reason; why we come to regard reason itself, not only as the sole legitimate source of belief which, perhaps, it may be but the sole source of legitimate beliefs which it assuredly is not, must now, I hope, be tolerably obvious, and needs not to be further emphasised. It is more instructive for our present purpose to consider for a moment certain consequences of this antinomy between the equities of Reason and the expediencies of Authority which rise into prominence whenever, under the changing conditions of society, the forces of the latter are being diverted into new and unaccustomed channels.

It is true, no doubt, that the full extent and difficulty of the problems involved have not commonly been realised by the advocates either of authority or reason, though each has usually had a sufficient sense of the strength of the other’s position to induce him to borrow from it, even at the cost of some little inconsistency. The supporter of authority, for instance, may point out some of the more obvious evils by which any decrease in its influence is usually accompanied: the comminution of sects, the divisions of opinion, the weakened powers of co-operation, the increase of strife, the waste of power. Yet, so far as I am aware, no nation, party, or Church has ever courted controversial disaster by admitting that, if its claims were impartially tried at the bar of Reason, the verdict would go against it. In the same way, those who have most clamorously upheld the prerogatives of individual reason have always been forced to recognise by their practice, if not by their theory, that the right of every man to judge on every question for himself is like the right of every man who possesses a balance at his bankers to require its immediate payment in sovereigns. The right may be undoubted; but it can only be safely enjoyed on condition that too many persons do not take it into their heads to exercise it together. Perhaps, however, the most striking evidence, both of the powers of authority and the rights of reason, may be found in the fact already alluded to, that beliefs which are really the offspring of the first, when challenged, invariably claim to trace their descent from the second, although this improvised pedigree may be as imaginary as if it were the work of a college of heralds. To be sure, when this contrivance has served its purpose it is usually laid silently aside, while the belief it was intended to support remains quietly in possession, until, in the course of time, some other, and perhaps not less illusory, title has to be devised to rebut the pleas of a new claimant.

If the reader desires an illustration of this procedure, here is one taken at random from English political history. Among the results of the movement which culminated in the Great Rebellion was of necessity a marked diminution in the universality and efficacy of that mixture of feelings and beliefs which constitutes loyalty to national government. Now loyalty, in some shape or other, is necessary for the stability of any form of polity. It is one of the most valuable products of authority, and, whether in any particular case conformable to reason or not, is essentially unreasoning. Its theoretical basis therefore excites but little interest, and is of very subordinate importance so long as it controls the hearts of men with undisputed sway. But as soon as its supremacy is challenged, men begin to cast about anxiously for reasons why it should continue to be obeyed.

Thus, to those who lived through the troubles which preceded and accompanied the Great Rebellion, it became suddenly apparent that it was above all things necessary to bolster up by argument the creed which authority had been found temporarily insufficient to sustain; and of the arguments thus called into existence two, both of extraordinary absurdity, have become historically famous that contained in Hobbes’s ’ Leviathan,’ and that taught for a period with much vigour by the Anglican clergy under the name of Divine right. These theories may have done their work; in any case they had their day. It was discovered that, as is the way of abstract arguments dragged in to meet a concrete difficulty, they led logically to a great many conclusions much less convenient than the one in whose defence they had been originally invoked. The crisis which called them forth passed gradually away. They were repugnant to the taste of a different age; ’ Leviathan ’ and ’ passive obedience ’ were handed over to the judgment of the historian. This is an example of how an ancient principle, broadly based though it be on the needs and feelings of human nature, may be thought now and again to require external support to enable it to meet some special stress of circumstances. But often the stress is found to be brief; a few internal alterations meet all the necessities of the case; to a new generation the added buttresses seem useless and unsightly. They are soon demolished, to make way in due time, no doubt, for others as temporary as themselves. Nothing so quickly waxes old as apologetics, unless, perhaps, it be criticism. A precisely analogous process commonly goes on in the case of new principles struggling into recognition. As those of older growth are driven by the instincts of self-preservation to call reasoning to their assistance, so these claim the aid of the same ally for purposes of attack and aggression; and the incongruity between the causes by which beliefs are sustained, and the official reasons by which they are from time to time justified, is usually as glaring in the case of the last novelty in doctrine as in that of some long descended and venerable prejudice. Witness the ostentatious futility of the theories ’ rights of man,’ and so forth by the aid of which the modern democratic movement was nursed through its infant maladies.

Now these things are true, not alone in politics, but in every field of human activity where authority and reason co-operate to serve the needs of mankind at large. And thus may we account for the singular fact that in many cases conclusions are more permanent than premises, and that the successive growths of apologetic and critical literature do often not more seriously affect the enduring outline of the beliefs by which they are occasioned than the successive forests of beech and fir determine the shape of the everlasting hills from which they spring.

Here, perhaps, I might fitly conclude this portion of my task, were it not that one particular mode in which Authority endeavours to call in reasoning to its assistance is so important in itself, and has led to so much confusion both of thought and of language, that a few paragraphs devoted to its consideration may help the reader o ta clearer understanding of the general subject. Authority, as I have been using the term, is in all cases contrasted with Reason, and stands for that group of non-rational causes, moral, social, and educational, which produces its results by psychic processes other than reasoning. But there is a simple operation, a mere turn of phrase, by which many of these non-rational causes can, so to speak, be converted into reasons without seeming at first sight thereby to change their function as channels of Authority; and so convenient is this method of bringing these two sources of conviction on to the same plane, so perfectly does it minister to our instinctive desire to produce a reason for every challenged belief, that it is constantly resorted to (without apparently any clear idea of its real import), both by those who regard themselves as upholders and those who regard themselves as opponents of Authority in matters of opinion. To say that I believe a statement because I have been taught it, or because my father believed it before me, or because everybody in the village believes it, is to announce what everyday experience informs us is a quite adequate cause of belief it is not, however, per se, to give a reason for belief at all. But such statements can be turned at once into reasons by no process more elaborate than that of explicitly recognising that my teachers, my family, or my neighboufs, are truthful persons, happy in the possession of adequate means of information propositions which in their turn, of course, require argumentative support. Such a procedure may, I need hardly say, be quite legitimate; and reasons of this kind are probably the principal ground on which in mature life we accept the great mass of our subordinate scientific and historical convictions. I believe, for instance, that the moon falls in towards the earth with the exact velocity required by the force of gravitation, for no other reason than that I believe in the competence and trustworthiness of the persons who have made the necessary calculations. In this case the reason for my belief and the immediate cause of it are identical; the cause, indeed, is a cause only in virtue of its being first a reason. But in the former case this is not so. Mere early training, paternal authority, or public opinion, were causes of belief before they were reasons; they continued to act as non-rational causes after they became reasons; and it is not improbable that to the very end they contributed less to the resultant conviction in their capacity as reasons than they did in their capacity as non-rational causes.

Now the temptation thus to convert causes into reasons seerns under certain circumstances to be almost irresistible, even when it is illegitimate. Authority, as such, is from the nature of the case dumb in the presence of argument. It is only by reasoning that reasoning can be answered. ft can be, and has often been, thrust silently aside by that instinctive feeling of repulsion which we call prejudice when we happen to disagree with it. But it can only be replied to by its own kind. And so it comes about that whenever any system of belief is seriously questioned, a method of defence which is almost certain to find favour is to select one of the causes by which the belief has been produced, and forthwith to erect it into a reason why the system should continue to be accepted. Authority, as I have been using the term, is thus converted into ’ an authority,’ or into ’ authorities.’ It ceases to be the opposite or correlative of reason. It can no longer be contrasted with reason. It becomes a species of reason, and as a species of reason it must be judged. So judged, it appears to me that two things pertinent to the present discussion may be said of it. In the first place, it is evidently an argument of immense utility and of very wide application. As I have just noted, it is the proximate reason for an enormous proportion of our beliefs as to matters of fact, past and present, and for that very large body of scientific knowledge which even experts in science can have no opportunity of personally verifying. But, in the second place, it seems not less clear that the argument from ’an authority’ or ’authorities’ is almost always useless as a foundation for a system of belief. The deep-lying principles which alone deserve this name may be, and frequently are, the product of authority. But the attempt to ground them dialectically upon an authority can scarcely be attempted, except at the risk of logical disaster.

Take as an example the general system of our beliefs about the material universe. The greater number of these are, as we have seen, quite legitimately based upon the argument from ’authorities’; not so those few which lie at the root of the system. These also are largely due to Authority. But they cannot be rationally derived from ’ authorities ’; though the attempt so to derive them is almost certain to be made. The ’ universal experience,’ or the ’ general consent of mankind,’ will be adduced as an authoritative sanction of certain fundamental presuppositions of physical science; and of these, at least, it will be said, securus judicat orbis terrarum. But a very little consideration is sufficient to show that this procedure is illegitimate, and that, as I have pointed out, we can neither know that the verdict of mankind has been given, nor, if it has, that anything can properly be inferred from it, unless we first assume the truth of the very principles which that verdict was invoked to establish. 1 The state of things is not materially different in the case of ethics and theology. There also the argument from ’ an authority ’ or ’ authorities ’ has 1 Cf. for a development of this statement, Philosophic Doubt, chap. vii. a legitimate and most important place; there also there is a constant inclination to extend the use of the argument so as to cover the fundamental portions of the system; and there also this endeavour, when made, seems predestined to end in a piece of circular reasoning. I can hardly illustrate this statement without mentioning dogma; though, as the reader will readily understand, I have not the slightest desire to do anything so little relevant to the purposes of this Introduction in order to argue either for or against it. As to the reality of an infallible guide, in whatever shape this has been accepted by various sections of Christians, I have not a word to say. As part of a creed it is quite outside the scope of my inquiry. I have to do with it only if, and in so far as, it is represented, not as part of the thing to be believed, but as one of the fundamental reasons for believing it; and in that position J think it inadmissible,,

Merely as an illustration, then, let us consider for a moment the particular case of Papal Infallibility, an example which may be regarded with the greater impartiality as I am not, I suppose, likely to have among the readers of these Notes many by whom it is accepted. If I rightly understand the teaching of the Roman Catholic theologians upon this subject, the following propositions, at least, must be accepted before the doctrine of Infallibility can be regarded as satisfactorily proved or adequately held: (i) That the words ’ Thou art Peter, and upon this rock,’ &c., and, again, ’ Feed my sheep,’ were uttered by Christ; and that, being so uttered, were of Divine authorship, and cannot fail. (2) That the meaning of these words is (a) that St. Peter was endowed with a primacy of jurisdiction over the other Apostles; (b) that he was to have a perpetual line of successors, similarly endowed with a primacy of jurisdiction; (c) that these successors were to be Bishops of Rome; (d) that the primacy of jurisdiction carries with it the certainty of Divine ’ assistance ’; (e) that though this ’ assistance ’ does not ensure either the morality, or, the wisdom, or the general accuracy of the Pontiff to whom it is given, it does ensure his absolute inerrancy whenever he shall, ex cathedrd, define a doctrine of faith or morals; (/) that no pronouncement can be regarded as ex cathedrd unless it relates to some matter already thoroughly sifted and considered by competent divines.

Now it is no part of my business to ask how the six sub-heads constituting the second of these contentions can by any legitimate process of exegesis be extracted from the texts mentioned in the first; nor how, if they be accepted to the full, they can obviate the necessity for the complicated exercise of private judgment required to determine whether any particular decision has or has not been made under the conditions necessary to constitute it a pronouncement ex cathedrd. These are questions to be discussed between Roman Catholic and non-Roman Catholic controversialists, and with them I have nothing here to do. My point is, that the first proposition alone is so absolutely subversive of any purely naturalistic view of the universe, involves so many fundamental elements of Christianity (e.g. the supernatural character of Christ and the trustworthiness of the first and fourth Gospels, with all that this carries with it), that if it does not require the argument from an infallible authority for its support, it seems hard to understand where the necessity for that argument can come in at any fundamental stage of apologetic demonstration. And that this proposition does not require infallible authority for its support seems plain from the fact that it does itself supply the main ground on which the existence of infallible authority is believed. This is not, and is not intended to be, an objection to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility; it is not, and is not intended to be, a criticism by means of example directed against other doctrines involving the existence of an unerring guide. But if the reader will attentively consider the matter he will, I think, see that whatever be the truth or the value of such doctrines, they can never be used to supply any fundamental support to the systems of which they form a part without being open to a reply like that which I have supposed in the case of Papal Infallibility. Indeed, when we reflect upon the character of the religious books and of the religious organisations through which Christianity has been built up; when we consider the variety in date, in occasion, in authorship, in context, in spiritual development, which mark the first; the stormy history and the inevitable division which mark the second; when we, further, reflect on the astonishing number of the problems, linguistic, critical, metaphysical, and historical, which must be settled, at least in some preliminary fashion, before either the books or the organisations can be supposed entitled by right of rational proof to the position of infallible guides, we can hardly suppose that we were intended to find in these the logical foundations of our system of religious beliefs, however important be the part (and can it be exaggerated?) which they were destined to play in producing, fostering, and directing it.

VI

Enough has now, perhaps, been said to indicate the relative positions of Reason and Authority in the production of belief. To Reason is largely due the growth of new and the sifting of old knowledge; the ordering, and in part the discovery, of that vast body of systematised conclusions which constitute so large a portion of scientific, philosophical, ethical, political, and theological learning. To Reason we are in some measure beholden, though not, perhaps, so much as we suppose, for hourly aid in managing so much of the trifling portion of our personal affairs entrusted to our care by Nature as we do not happen to have already surrendered to the control of habit. By Reason also is directed, or misdirected, the public policy of communities within the narrow limits of deviation permitted by accepted custom and tradition. Of its immense indirect consequences, of the part it has played in the evolution of human affairs by the disintegration of ancient creeds, by the alteration of the external conditions of human life, by the production of new moods of thought, or, as I have termed them, psychological climates, we can in this connection say nothing. For these are no rational effects of reason; the causal nexus by which they are bound to reason has no logical aspect; and if reason produces them, as in part it certainly does, it is in a manner indistinguishable from that in which similar consequences are blindly produced by the distribution of continent and ocean, the varying fertility of different regions, and the other material surroundings by which the destinies of the race are modified. When we turn, however, from the conscious work of Reason to that which is unconsciously performed for us by Authority, a very different spectacle arrests our attention. The effects of the first, prominent as they are through the dignity of their origin, are trifling compared with the all-pervading influences which flow from the second. At every moment of our lives, as individuals, as members of a family, of a party, of a nation, of a Church, of a universal brotherhood, the silent, continuous, unnoticed influence of Authority moulds our feelings, our aspirations, and, what we are more immediately concerned with, our beliefs. It is from Authority that Reason itself draws its most important premises. It is in unloosing or directing the forces of Authority that its most important conclusions find their principal function. And even in those cases where we may most truly say that our beliefs are the rational product of strictly intellectual processes, we have, in all probability, only got to trace back the thread of our inferences to its beginnings in order to perceive that it finally loses itself in some general principle which, describe it as we may, is in fact due to no more defensible origin than the influence of Authority. Nor is the comparative pettiness of the role thus played by reasoning in human affairs a matter for regret. Not merely because we are ignorant of the data required for the solution, even of very simple problems in organic and social life, arc we called on to acquiesce in an arrangement which, to be sure, we have no power to disturb; nor yet because these data, did we possess them, are too complex to be dealt with by any rational calculus we possess or are ever likely to acquire; but because, in addition to these difficulties, reasoning is a force most apt to divide and disintegrate; and though division and disintegration may often be the necessary preliminaries of social development, still more necessary are the forces which bind and stiffen, without which there would be no society to develop.

It is true^ no doubt, that we can, without any great expenditure of research, accumulate instances in which Authority has perpetuated error and retarded progress; for, unluckily, none of the influences, Reason least of all, by which the history of the race has been moulded have been productive of unmixed good. The springs at which we quench our thirst are always turbid. Yet, if we are to judge with equity between these rival claimants, we must not forget that it is Authority rather than Reason to which, in the main, we owe, not religion only, but ethics and politics; that it is Authority which supplies us with essential elements in the premises of science; that it is Authority rather than Reason which lays deep the foundations of social life; that it is Authority rather than Reason which cements its superstructure. And though it may seem to savour of paradox, it is" yet no exaggeration to say, that if we would find the quality in which we most notably excel the brute creation, we should look for it, not so much in our faculty of convincing and being convinced by the exercise of reasoning, as in our capacity for influencing and being influenced through the action of Authority.

[NOTE ON THE USE OF THE WORDS ’ AUTHORITY ’ AND ’ REASON ’

Much criticism has been directed against the use to which the word ’ Authority ’ has been put in this chapter. And there can be no doubt that a terminology which draws so sharp a distinction between phrases so nearly identical as ’ authority ’ and ’ an authority ’ must be open to objection.

Yet it still seems to me difficult to find a more suitable expression. There is no word in the English language which describes what I want to describe, and yet describes nothing else. Every alternative term seems at least as much open to misconception as the one I have employed, and I do not observe that those who have most severely criticised it, have suggested an unobjectionable substitute. Professor Pringle Pattison (Seth) in a most interesting and sympathetic review of this work, 1 goes the length of saying that my use of the word is a ’ complete departure from ordinary usage." But I can hardly think that this is so. However else the word may be employed in common parlance, it is surely often employed exactly as it is in this chapter namely, to describe those causes of belief which are not reasons and yet are due to the influence of mind on mind. Parental influence is typical of the species: and it would certainly be in conformity with accepted usage to describe this as ’ Authority. ’ A child does not accept its mother’s teaching because it regards its mother as ’ an authority ’ whom it is reasonable to believe. The process is one of non-rational (not /rrational) causation. Again I do not think it would be regarded as forced to talk of the ’ authority of public opinion ’ or the ’ authority of custom ’ exactly with the meaning which such expression would bear in the preceding chapter. ’ He submitted to the authority of a 1 Since republished in Man’s Place in the Cosmos. ’ Op. fit. p. 265. stronger will.’ ’ He never asked on what basis the claims of his Church rested; he simply bowed, as from his childhood he had always bowed, to her unchallenged authority.’ ’ No doubts were ever entertained, no inconvenient questions were ever asked, about the propriety of a practice which was enforced by the authority of unbroken custom.’ I think it will be admitted that in all these examples the word ’ authority ’ is used in the sense I have attributed to it, that this sense is a natural sense, and that no other single word could advantageously be substituted for it. If so, the reasons for its employment seem not inadequate.

I feel on even stronger ground in replying to the criticisms passed on my use here of the word ’ reason.’ Professor Pattison, though he does not like it, admits that it is in accordance with the practice of the older English thinkers. I submit that it is also in accordance with the usage prevalent in ordinary discourse. But I go further and say that I am employing the word in the sense in which it is always employed when ’ reason ’ is contrasted with ’ authority.’ If a man boasts that all his opinions have been arrived at by ’ following reason,’ he is referring not to the Universal Reason or Logos, but to his own faculty of discursive reason: and what he wishes the world to understand is that his beliefs are based on reasoning, not on authority or prejudice. Now this is the very individual whom I had in my mind when writing this chapter: and if I had been debarred from using the words ’ reason ’ and ’ reasoning ’ in their ordinary everyday meaning, I really do not see in what language I could have addressed myself to him at all.]