RELATION OF THE WILL TO BELIEF.
The following, from the "Evidences of Christianity," by Dr. Mark Hopkins, is a most clear and forcible statement of truths that are too little appreciated even by Christians themselves. The article will be read with peculiar interest, now that the death of the author, at the age of eighty-five, has directed special attention to his life and work; but it is worthy of a careful perusal on its own merits:— I am met by the objection that the belief of a man is not within his own power, but that he is compelled to believe according to certain laws of evidence. This objection I do not apprehend to be of very wide influence; but I have met with a few men of intelligence who have held to it, and it has been sustained by some names of high authority. I am therefore bound to notice it. In this case, as in most others of a similar kind, the objection involves a partial truth, from which its plausibility is derived. It is true, within certain limitations, and under certain conditions, and with respect to certain kinds of truth, that we are not voluntary in our belief; but then these conditions and limitations are such as entirely to sever from this truth any consequence that we are not perfectly ready to admit. We admit that belief is in no case directly dependent on the will; that in some cases it is entirely independent of it; but he must be exceedingly bigoted, or unobservant of what passes around him, who should affirm that the will has no influence. The influence of the will here is analogous to its influence in many other cases. It is as great as it is over the objects which we see. It does not depend upon the will of any man, if he turns his eyes in a particular direction, whether he shall see a tree there. If the tree be there, he must see it, and is compelled to believe in its existence; but it was entirely within his power not to turn his eyes in that direction, and thus to remain unconvinced, on the highest of all evidence, of the existence of the tree, and unimpressed by its beauty and proportion. It is not by his will directly that man has any control over his thoughts. It is not by willing a thought into the mind that he can call it there; and yet we all know that through attention and habits of association the subjects of our thoughts are, to a great extent, directed by the will. It is precisely so in respect to belief; and he who denies this, denies the value of candor, and the influence of party spirit, and prejudice, and interest, on the mind. So great is this influence, however, that a keen observer of human nature, and one who will not be suspected of leaning unduly to the doctrine I now advocate, has supposed it to extend even to our belief of mathematical truth. "Men," says Hobbes, "appeal from custom to reason, and from reason to custom, as it serves their turn, receding from custom when their interest requires it, and setting themselves against reason as oft as reason is against them; which is the cause that the doctrine of right and wrong is perpetually disputed both by the pen and the sword; whereas the doctrine of lines and figures is not so, because men care not, in that subject, what is truth, as it is a thing that crosses no man's ambition, or profit, or lust. For, I doubt not, if it had been a thing contrary to any man's right of dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion, that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square, that doctrine should have been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all books of geometry, suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned was able." "This," says Hallam, from whose work I make the quotation, "does not exaggerate the pertinacity of mankind in resisting the evidence of truth when it thwarts the interests or passions of any particular sect or community." Let a man who hears the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid announced for the first time, trace the steps of the demonstration, and he must believe it to be true; but let him know that, as soon as he does perceive the evidence of that proposition so as to believe it on that ground, he shall lose his right eye, and he will never trace the evidence, or come to that belief which results from the force of the only proper evidence. You may tell him it is true, but he will reply that he does not know, he does not see it to be so. So far, then, from finding in this law of belief—the law by which it is necessitated on condition of a certain amount of evidence perceived by the mind—an excuse for any who do not receive the evidence of the Christian religion, it is in this very law that I find the ground of their condemnation. Certainly, if God has provided evidence as convincing as that for the forty-seventh of Euclid, so that all men have to do is to examine it with candor, then they must be without excuse if they do not believe. This, I suppose, God has done. He asks no one to believe except on the ground of evidence, and such evidence as ought to command assent. Let a man examine this evidence with entire candor, laying aside all regard for consequences or results, simply according to the laws of evidence, and then, if he is not convinced, I believe God will, so far forth, acquit him in the great day of account. But if God has given men such evidence that a fair, and full, and perfectly candid examination is all that is needed to necessitate belief, then, if men do not believe, it will be in this very law that we shall find the ground of their condemnation. The difficulty will not lie in their mental constitution as related to evidence, nor in the want of evidence, but in that moral condition, that state of the heart, or the will, which prevented a proper examination. "There seems," says Butler, "no possible reason to be given why we may not be in a state of moral probation with regard to the exercise of our understanding upon the subject of religion, as we are with regard to our behavior in common affairs. The former is a thing as much within our power and choice as the latter."4And here, I remark incidentally, we see what it is for truth to have a fair chance. There are many who think it has this when it is left free to combat error without the intervention of external force; and they seem to suppose it will, of necessity, prevail. But the fact is, that the truth almost never has a fair chance with such a being as man, when the reception of it involves self-denial, or the recognition of duties to which he is indisposed. Let "the mists that steam up before the intellect from a corrupt heart be dispersed," and truths, before obscure, shine out as the noonday. Before the mind of one with the intellect of a man, but with the purity and unselfishness of an angel, the evidence of such a system as the gospel would have a fair chance. What, then, is the kind of evidence by which Christianity is supported? And here I am ready to say, it is moral evidence, as opposed to mathematical, and what is called probable evidence, as opposed to demonstrative. Is, then, mathematical evidence a better ground of certainty than moral evidence? On this point, and also respecting the subjects to which mathematical evidence can properly be applied, there is a wrong impression extensively prevalent, not only in the community at large, but among educated men. Figures, it is said, cannot lie, and there seems to be an impression that where they are used, the result must be certain. But when a surveyor measures the sides and angles of a field, and ascertains the contents by calculation, is he certain he has the exact contents of that field? He may be so if no mistake has been made in measuring the sides and angles. But of that he never can be certain; or, if he is, it cannot be by mathematical evidence. His accuracy will depend upon the perfection of his instruments, of which he never can be certain. So it will be found in all cases of what are called mixed mathematics. There are elements entering into the result that do not depend on mathematical evidence, and therefore the evidence for that result is not demonstrative. Even in those results in which the greatest confidence is felt, and in which there seems to be, and perhaps is, an entire coincidence with fact, the certainty that is felt does not result from mathematical evidence. No man who understands the nature of the evidence on which he proceeds, would say he had demonstrated that there would be an eclipse next year. His expectation of it would depend, not on mathematical evidence, but upon his belief in the stability of the laws of nature. And even in accordance with those laws, it is not impossible that some new comet may come in athwart the orbit of the earth or the moon, and disturb their relative position. But, says the objector, I speak of pure mathematics, and of the certainty of their evidence. I say, then, with regard to pure mathematics, that it has no application to facts. No fact can be demonstrated. Nothing whatever, no assertion about anything that ever did exist, or ever can exist, can be demonstrated, that is, proved, by evidence purely mathematical. This will be assented to by all who understand the nature of mathematical evidence, and it can be easily shown. It can be demonstrated that the two acute angles in every right-angled triangle are equal to the right angle; but can this be demonstrated of any actually existing triangle? Draw what you call a right-angled triangle, and can you demonstrate it about that? No; you cannot demonstrate that your given triangle is right-angled. Whether it is or not will depend upon the perfection of your instruments and the perfection of the senses. Accordingly, demonstration never asserts, and never can assert, of any triangle that it is right-angled; but its language is, Let it be a right-angled triangle, suppose it to be, and then the two acute angles will be equal to that right angle. It asserts nothing whatever about anything that actually exists, but only the connection between a certain supposition and a certain conclusion. Whatever certainty we have, therefore, about anything that actually exists, or has existed, or can exist, is derived, not from mathematical, but from what is called moral or probable evidence. What, then, shall we say of the reasonableness, or rather of the folly, of those who ask for mathematical evidence to prove the truth of the Christian religion, when that evidence cannot be applied to prove any one fact whatever? And what shall we say of the boasted superiority of mathematical evidence, when the certainty which any man feels even for such a hypothetical conclusion as can be demonstrated is, after all, dependent upon evidence that is not mathematical? I would by no means disparage mathematics. I acknowledge their extensive utility and application. I am surprised at that skill in the construction of instruments by which truths demonstrated concerning supposed lines and figures can be so correctly and generally applied to the purposes of practical life. I look with wonder upon that structure of the universe, by which truths demonstrated concerning these same abstract propositions are found to apply with so much exactness to its forms, and forces, and movements; but still, I would have this science keep within its own sphere, and not arrogate to itself a certainty which does not belong to it in virtue of its own authority, and which operates practically to throw distrust upon our conclusions in other departments. Either, then, there is certainty on other ground than mathematical evidence, or there is no certainty concerning any fact or existing thing whatever, and there will be no stopping short of that fundamental skepticism which denies the authority of the human faculties, and doubts of everything, and finally doubts whether it doubts.