For a "Perhaps.?"

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3220, 14 June 1879, Page 3

For a "Perhaps.?"

TJie. Mticßt culture of tlie, intellect is not favorable either-to undoubting conviction of nny truth or. unhesitating devotion to any, cauao. It baa beon truly said by Goethe, " The greater the knowledge the grenter the doubt." The raithfulle^t thinkers have felt more painfully than others that the deeper they ro often the less easy is it to reach soundings ; —in a word the more thorough their study of the grandest subjects of human interest, the further do they get, not to, but from, certainty : the moro fully they can see all sides and enter into all con■idcrations, the less able dp they foel to pronounce dogmatically or to act decidedly. " The tree of knowledge is not that of life: "-—-profound thought if honest and couragep.us, is deplorably apt to.' sap the foundation and impair the strength of our moral as well as of our intellectual .(jonyictionß.' It. weakens the power of self-sacrifice inevitably by weakening that positive undoubting confidence in the correctness of our conclusions and the soundness of our cause from .which; all the marvels of selfsacrifice have sprung. The Age of Martyrdom is not the Age of Thought. The men who can die for a faith are not the same, who can. .investigate, it closely,' or judge, it fairly., (The discovery of truth belongs to an ago of inquiry: the promulgation and triumph of a creed heloags to an age of unasking and unreasoning belief. We laugh at the scholastic! nonsense of Irenseus and are disgusted at the .unseemly violence of iTertullian :— > but these men were ready to die for their opinions, and we are not. The fact is, it; is only minds which see but a little way that tee clearly and fancy they -see all; it is only those who see but one 'side that can feel confident there is no other;' it is only those whom study has never taught how wide is the question which seems to them so narrow—how question-: •ble the f&ctswhich seem to thotn so certain—how feeble the arguments which ■seemto <\ theni io 'impre^aabler-that can' be * positive in! their 1 beliefs: it is only \ -those Tvh6ttenquir ly has never compelled' to abandon any of their past opinions who : can feel sure enough to encounter martyrdom for present ones.. Philosophers can neither burn noip'be burned for a creed :—for after all may they, not be mistaken now as they have often been before ? It may welt tie doubted whethersome degree of fanaticism—i.e., wrong appreciation of the essential value of things—is not necessary to prompt the higher, efforts of self-sacrifice ; whether ' any calm judging, far-seeing, profoundly sagacious man, would think any opinion certain enough, or aity cause valuable or,spotless enough, to b¥ worth dying for —except, indeed, the right of free action and free thought. If all men had been deep thinkers—had seen eTery thing correctly; valued everything, at .its precise worth, measured-'-the relative importance of each object, estimated accurately the degree of certainty attainable [regarding each Opinion or each faith', —could we have had those martyrs who have conquered for 'us our present freedom- P^and who won it, so to speak, incidentally and by a sort of fluke ; for they died, not for the right of every man to maintain whatever he thought true, but for their right to hold and to proclaim their 6wh'! sjeciaj form of error. Where is tbe vßelieTer- who does not now admit that* many of these men went to the «caffpld for an error—were inartyrg by mistake P "vybere i«f the Philosopher who does not suspect that all . may have thus nobly blundered ?—Enigmas of Life. W. R. Gbbg. :