our errors

As noted in this morning's dawn post (and in yesterday's A&S class) William James was not a good suspender of belief when he felt something life-giving was hanging in the balance. Beliefs are those thoughts upon which we are prepared to act, and the thought of not acting just because the right kind of evidence is not yet forthcoming was anathema to him. He wasn't defiant of extant evidence, but he was always eager to fill the vacuum of missing evidence whenever the act of filling would enact constructive ideals and make life seem more worth living to the actor. He had no use for Clifford's counsel (in The Ethics of Belief) to wait.


Believe nothing, he tells us, keep your mind in suspense forever, rather than by closing it on insufficient evidence incur the awful risk of believing lies. You, on the other hand, may think that the risk of being in error is a very small matter when compared with the blessings of real knowledge, and be ready to be duped many times in your investigation rather than postpone indefinitely the chance of guessing true. I myself find it impossible to go with Clifford. We must remember that these feelings of our duty about either truth or error are in any case only expressions of our passional life. Biologically considered, our minds are as ready to grind out falsehood as veracity, and he who says, " Better go without belief forever than believe a lie!" merely shows his own preponderant private horror of becoming a dupe. He may be critical of many of his desires and fears, but this fear he slavishly obeys. He cannot imagine any one questioning its binding force. For my own part, I have also a horror of being duped; but I can believe tbat worse things tban being duped may happen to a man in this world: so Clifford's exhortation has to my ears a thoroughly fantastic sonnd. It is like a general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle forever than to risk a single wound. Not so are victories either over enemies or over nature gained. Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf. At any rate, it seems the fittest thing for the empiricist philosopher. Will to Believe