THE ETHICS OF BELIEF (abridged)
William K. Clifford
For the full text, see here.
A shipowner was about to send to
sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not over well built at the
first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs.
Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These
doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought
to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him
to great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming
these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely
through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to
suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his
trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy
families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere.
He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of
builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable
conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure
with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in
their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went
down in mid-ocean and told no tales.
What shall we say of him? Surely
this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that
he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his
conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence
as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in
patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts. And although in the end he
may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch
as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he
must be held responsible for it.
Let us alter the case a little, and
suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage
safely, and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner?
Not one jot. When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental
failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. The man would not
have been innocent, he would only have been not found out. 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 on such evidence as was before
him.
[ … ]
If a belief is not realized
immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future. It
goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between
sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so
organized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the
rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole. No real
belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant;
it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before,
and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts,
which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character
for ever.
And no one man’s belief is in any
case a private matter which concerns himself alone. Our lives are guided by
that general conception of the course of things which has been created by
society for social purposes. Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes
and modes of thought, are common property, fashioned and perfected from age to
age; an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as a precious
deposit and a sacred trust to be handled on to the next one, not unchanged but
enlarged and purified, with some clear marks of its proper handiwork. Into
this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his
fellows. An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help
to create the world in which posterity will live.
In the [case] considered, it has
been judged wrong to believe on insufficient evidence, or to nourish belief by
suppressing doubts and avoiding investigation. The reason of this judgment is
not far to seek: it is that in both these cases the belief held by one man was
of great importance to other men. But forasmuch as no belief held by one man,
however seemingly trivial the belief, and however obscure the believer, is ever
actually insignificant or without its effect on the fate of mankind, we have no
choice but to extend our judgment to all cases of belief whatever.
[ … ]
It is not only the leader of men,
statesmen, philosopher, or poet, that owes this bounden duty to mankind. Every
rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may
help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race. Every
hard-worked wife of an artisan may transmit to her children beliefs which shall
knit society together, or rend it in pieces. No simplicity of mind, no
obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we
believe.
[ … ]
Every time we let ourselves believe
for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self control, of doubting, of
judicially and fairly weighing evidence. We all suffer severely enough from the
maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which
they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great
and wide. But a greater and wider evil arises when the credulous character is
maintained and supported, when a habit of believing for unworthy reasons is
fostered and made permanent. If I steal money from any person, there may be no
harm done from the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it
may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great
wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest. What hurts society is not that
it should lose its property, but that it should become a den of thieves, for
then it must cease to be society. This is why we ought not to do evil, that
good may come; for at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil
and are made wicked thereby. In like manner, if I let myself believe anything
on insufficient evidence, 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 I make 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. Habitual want of care about what I believe
leads to habitual want of care in others about the truth of what is told to me.
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 I believe thig 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 our duties knit together,
that whoso shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty
of all.
To sum up: it is wrong always,
everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
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