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CT 8}
COMMON SOURCE OF ERROR IN
SEEING AND BELIEVING.
iCccturc
DELIVERED BEFORE
SUNDAY LECTURE
THE
SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 27th FEBRUARY, 1881,
By H. MAUDSLEY, M.D.,
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881.
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�Works by the same Author:
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�SYLLABUS.
1. The influence of preconceived idea and of feeling to vitiate observation.
Illustrations:
a. Illusions of Sense.
b. Hallucinations of Sense.
c. Erroneous observation.
d. Miracles.
2. The influence of feeling and belief to vitiate reasoning.
a. Individuals.
b. In communities.
3. The relation of feeling to intellect in the progress of the race.
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�COMMON SOURCE OF ERROR IN
SEEING AND BELIEVING.
PROPOSE not in this lecture to enumerate and discuss all the
mistakes which we are liable to make when we see and draw
conclusions from what we see—all the fallacies, that is to say, to
which observation and reasoning are exposed; I purpose only to
note and illustrate now one very common and prolific source of
wrong observation and inference. It is certain we do not see and
judge rightly by instinct; too often, although we have eyes, we
see not truly, and although we have reason, we use it to come to
wrong conclusions. Reason, we know, man claims as his almost
exclusive prerogative, defining himself—for he has that advantage
over other animals—as pre-eminently the reasoning animal; and
one need not cavil at the definition so long as it is not understood
to mean that everybody reasons rightly, or even commonly bases
his beliefs upon reason. To say of the great majority of persons
that they reason at all in the highest sense of the word is to say
what is not true, since their opinions are plainly either got by
inheritance, or engrafted by education, or moulded by particular
life-experiences, or imposed by authority of some kind, and are
then worn by them, as they wear their clothes, after the fashion.
Governed by their habits of opinion as they are by their habits of
life they find it as hard a matter to change the one as to change
the other. If all men reasoned truly and adequately on every
subject, it is evident that all men would be agreed, which is not
quite the case; we should not be meeting here this afternoon to
broach opinions which will not be perhaps in harmony with those
which have been preached from a thousand pulpits this morning;
the heresy of yesterday would not be, as it often is, the common
sense of to-day, and the common sense of to-day the nonsense of
to-morrow; the majority would not have found it necessary to
stone, burn, poison, cut asunder, crucify, or otherwise silence the
voices of the few who, in the succession of the ages, have not
I
�6
Common Source of Error in
failed to appear from time to time to inspire and to raise men to
higher planes of thought and duty; the world would have been
without the history of its noble army of martyrs of humanity.
This being so, it is a good thing, I think, from time to time to
make a particular study of the common errors to which we are
liable in observation and thinking, and to take note how far
wrong they may carry us. My attention is drawn often and
forcibly to this matter, because, in the course of my professional
work, I meet with persons who, of sound understanding in respect
of all ordinary matters, entertain some extraordinary delusions in
respect of one or two subjects, and cannot be convinced of their
errors by the plainest evidence and argument. Naturally one asks
oneself how it comes to pass that they form and entertain notions
which are absurd to the common sense of mankind, holding to
them in the face of conclusive disproof, and notwithstanding that
they cannot find a single person in the world to agree with them.
The vulgar saying is that they have “ lost their senses,” but it is
not so; their senses are in full work, but somehow they fail to
perform their proper offices. In seeking the explanations of these
remarkable distractions of mind one comes to perceive that, after
all, these people have only carried to an extreme pitch, to an
insane height, a kind of faulty observation and reasoning which
is common enough among persons who are not in the least out of
their minds. ’Tis not true perhaps, as is sometimes said, that
everybody is a little mad, but it is true -that everybody makes day
by day the same sort of errors in observation and reasoning as
those which lead madmen to their delusions.
I go at once to the heart of what I have to say by laying down
the broad proposition that in looking at things a person sees what
he believes he sees, not necessarily that which really is : his notion
of what he sees may correspond with the reality or not, but in
any case he does not see the reality purely ; he sees it through the
idea or notion which he has of it. Had I been born blind, and
were my eyes opened at this moment for the first time to see a
human face before me, I should not know it to be such by my
sense of sight alone: I know a human face, when I see it, only
because of the training in seeing which has been going on ever
since I was born, the unceasing, if unconscious, education which
I have had. The idea has been organised gradually in my mind—
abstract, so to speak, from a multitude of impressions—and when
it is stirred into activity by the proper impression made upon
sight it instantly interprets that impression, so that I recognise
�Seeing and Believing.
7
the object.
*
If my idea were very active and at the same time
did not fit the reality, it might mislead sight, making me mistake
the identity of a face which I saw—just as Don Quixote, possessed
with his fixed idea of giants and enchanted castles, mistook the
sails of a windmill for the arms of a giant—or even, in a more
extreme case, making me actually see a face where there was no face
at all. You have perhaps seen a person who has been put into
what is called the mesmeric state and noticed the extraordinary
illusions which he can be made to suffer: the operator bids him
take a glass of simple water, assuring him at the same time that it
is exceedingly bitter and nasty, and he forthwith spits it out as if
it were poison, with every expression of disgust; he is told that a
wasp is buzzing about his face and he instantly makes frantic
movements to strike it away; he is introduced to a stranger as his
mother or sister and he immediately embraces her. There is
scarcely a mistake of sense, however extravagant, of which he
may not be made the victim if he is duly susceptible and the
operator skilful and confident. Now what is it which takes place ?
This: the idea suggested by the operator becomes so very active
in the subject’s mind, takes such exclusive possession of it, that all
other ideas are inhibited or silenced; they are inactive, in abey
ance, asleep, so to speak, unable therefore to comment upon or
correct it; accordingly the person sees, hears, or otherwise per
ceives all impressions through the active idea, which interprets
them instantly into the language of its own nature : being the
only part of the mind which is then sensible to stimulus and in
function, it cannot of necessity reveal anything which it does notice
but in terms of itself. The person does not see the real thing but
his notion of what the real thing is and that does not in this
case accord with what really is. Here then is an experiment
which plainly shows us that an idea in the mind may reach such a
pitch of exclusive activity as to put to silence other ideas and to
completely befool the senses. It is what happens also to the mad
man who, having the delusion that he is the victim of a malignant
persecution, sees or hears his persecutors pursue or threaten him
where no one else can see or hear anything of them.
I now go a step further and note that something of the same
sort takes place in dreams. When we are asleep we see nothing
* The common saying that “seeing is believing” may then be applied
in a double sense—not alone in the understood sense that we believe by
what we see, but also in the sense that we see by what we believe.
�8
Common Source of Error in
outside us: our eyes being shut it is impossible we should ; never
theless we do see very remarkable scenes if we dream, seeing them
too as if they were outside us and more vividly perhaps than we
do see real things when we are awake. What happens is that the
thoughts of the dreamer as they occur to him become instantly
visible as sensory presentations ; the idea of a thing, so soon as it
becomes active, takes form as the sensible object, is translated into
the outward reality; the idea of a person, for example, becomes
the seen person, the idea of a voice the heard voice. >80 before the
dreamer’s eyes as a visible pageant, a scenic show, moves the train
of succeeding ideas; it is as if each vague thought which came
into the mind as we walked along the street absorbed in reverie
was visible as an actual scene ; in which case it is plain we
should be surrounded by an ideal world which would be the real
world to us, while the real world would be faint and shadowy or
quite unperceived. Now this happens the more easily in dreams
for two reasons—first, because the active idea has for the time
almost exclusive possession of the mind, the rest of it being asleep,
and, secondly, because the closure of the senses by sleep to all
outward things, preventing that distraction of them by other
objects which is taking place more or less during waking even in
the deepest reverie, leaves them at the mercy of the idea. Here
there is another instance where an idea or notion vividly experi
enced imposes itself upon sense, becomes an actual hallucination.
Take another case: people don’t see ghosts nowadays when they
go through churchyards by night, as they used often to do in olden
times. Why is that ? It is because, not believing in ghosts, they
do not expect to see them: they have not in their minds the idea
of a ghost which may step solemnly forth from behind a tombstone
or glide away like a guilty thing ashamed. ’Tis an instance of the
excellent philosophy which is never wanting in Shakspeare, that
he makes Hamlet see his father’s ghost at midnight, when the air
is bitterly cold, not a mouse stirring, on the lonely and rocky
platform before the castle of Elsinore, after he had been informed
in solemnly impressive tones of its previous appearances, when he
himself is there in a tremor of expectation to see it, and immedi
ately after Horatio’s exclamation “ Look, my lord, it comes!”
Again: there is an event which has happened sometimes to
dying persons, well fitted to make a solemn and startling impres
sion on those about them. When at the point of death or nearly
so, the dying person, gazing intently before him, as if he saw some
one there, may pronounce suddenly the name of a long dead
�9
Seeing and Believing.
Relative, exclaim perhaps “ Mother,” and soon after expire. Natu
rally people suppose that the spirit of his dead mother has appeared
to him, and are happy to think that he has joined in a better world
those who were taken away from him in this world. So they take
CQmfort to themselves when they lose by death one who is near
and dear to them in the belief that although he shall not return to
them they shall go to him. That may or may not be, but certainly
the apparition is not proof of it, since it is no more than one of
the hallucinations which a dying person is liable to have; for when
he is near death and the failing functions of his brain portend
their near impending extinction, wandering thoughts of the far
distant past, impressions of childhood perhaps, seemingly long
effaced, but never actually effaced, may flicker in the mind and,
taking visible form as thoughts take form in dreams, be seen as
visions. You will remember that Shakspeare makes Falstaff,
when dying in a London tavern after a life of the most gross
debauchery, a worn out old libertine, go back in this way to the
memories of more innocent days and “babble of green fields.”*
These broken reversions, as I may call them, are the last ebbing
functions of the brain which, as Shakspeare puts it, then
“ Doth by the idle comments that it makes
Foretell the ending of mortality.”
'
I might go on to multiply instances of this production of hallu
cination by idea, since they are to be met with in all quarters.
You have heard perhaps that there has lately been an apparition
of the Virgin Mary at Lather Ignatius’s Monastery - of Llanthonev
Abbey, which was seen first in a meadow by four boys of the
Abbey, after that by a brother of the Abbey, and last of all
by Father Ignatius himself. This is his account of what he
saw:—
“ About eight o’clock on Wednesday evening, the 15th inst. (after
the last service of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin) we all
* It is very doubtful, however, whether Shakspeare ever wrote what is
now the received text. In the first authentic edition (1623) the words
were not “ ’a babbled of green fields,” but “ a table of green fields,” which
was nonsense. It was changed by an anonymous critic to “ ’a talked of
green fields,” which Theobald altered into the present reading. Thirty
years ago, however, an annotated copy of the edition of 1632 was found,
which, among a great number of corrections of the text, substituted for
“’a.table of green fields,” the words “on a table of green frieze ”—£<?.,
“ His nose was as sharp as a pen on a table of green frieze.” Dr. Newman
makes use of these discrepancies for the purposes of his argument in
Grammar of Assent (p. 265), and it is from him that I quote them.
�10
Common Source of Error in
came to the porch door. I held the processional crucifix. With
me were the brothers, Mr. Bouse, and a gentleman from Oxford
who had visited the Monastery for the purpose of endeavouring
to see the vision. The boys were kneeling in front of us, Sister
Janet was kneeling in the meadow. It was a very wet night. We
were singing the ‘Aves.’ We had sung three ‘Aves ’ in honour
of the Holy Trinity, and we had just finished a fourth to the
Blessed Virgin, when, all of a sudden, when I was not expecting
anything of the kind, I saw a tremendous outburst of light from
the dark, heavy clouds over the farm building. It seemed to
burst right upon the buildings. The light was all in bulging circles.
In the very centre of the light there appeared, coming down upon
us, a human form. It was a very commanding^ stately figure.
I could only see sideways. The face was turned towards the bush.
I could only see it momentarily, as it were in the 1 twinkling of an
eye.’ But in that moment it stood out so distinctly and startling
that I am sure that it was darker than the light. Had it been
clothed in cloth of silver, or cloth of gold, it might have produced
the same effect—the darkness against the light. There was an
intense reality about the figure. It was momentary, as I before
said, and yet it seemed that it might have been an hour’s vision,
so intensely real was it. In the majesty of the figure, and in its
being dark against the light, it reminded me of Dore’s picture,
‘The triumph of Christianity over Paganism.’ There were
flashings of light about the figure. In a moment, as I looked, it
vanished. Before it vanished it had appeared as if it would have
descended upon the church door or the church roof. I feel sure
that it must have been the figure of the Blessed Virgin, because,
although I could not discern the dress it wore, I could see that it
was fully draped; whereas in the visions which others have seen,
when they have seen a male figure, it has always appeared with
simply a cloth round the loins, as our Lord is represented in
baptism, and at other times. I also feel sure that it was the
Virgin, because the figure appeared immediately after we had
sung the ‘ Ave ’ in her honour. The figure also had its face
turned towards the bush, where our Ladye had first been seen. I
have further confirmation in the fact that about two or three
minutes afterwards the Blessed Virgin’s figure was seen by the
gentleman who was watching with us, and by one of the boys,
nearer to the ground.” *
* South Wales Daily News, September 13th and 27th, 1880.
�Seeing and Believing.
11
“ These,” he says, “ are extraordinary and absolute facts. The
sceptic may and will scoff, but his scoffing will not explain or
diminish the truth or supernatural character of these absolute and
incontrovertible facts * * * No amount of contradiction, ridicule,
or unbelief can alter the fact that Monday, August 30th, 1880, be
tween the hours of 9 and 11 a.m., the Blessed Virgin appeared in
dazzling light to four boys and did what no earthly being could do
before their eyes.”. With such positive and incontrovertible testi
mony of eye-witnesses, are you of so little faith as to doubt that
the Blessed Virgin appeared ? Probably you have great doubts, as
I have; and perhaps I may venture to think that I shall carry your
sympathetic doubts with me in my sceptical interpretation of
another vivid vision of an apparition in circumstances particularly
favourable to its occurrence.
The vision in this case happened to a woman whom we may
believe to have been predisposed in some measure to hallucination,
since we are told of her that she had once had seven devils cast
out of her; a story which, in modern scientific interpretation,
means that she had once been insane and had recovered. In all
likelihood, therefore, she was one of those persons, susceptible or
sensitive, as mesmerists call them, whose unstably balanced nervecentres were easily liable to take on that sort of irregular action
which issues in hallucination and delusion. The woman I refer
to is Mary Magdalene, who visited the sepulchre of Christ on the
third day aft.er His burial, and who, according to the gospel of St.
John, saw two angels in white sitting, the one at the head and the
other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain. I say accord
ing to John, because the stories of the resurrection told by the
writers of the different gospels differ considerably in details;
amongst other things, not agreeing as to whether there was one
angel or whether there were two angels, or as to the persons who
saw the apparition or apparitions. Discrepancies in the stories of
supernatural phenomena are not of course to be wondered at;
they are the natural results of an inspiration more than natural
pouring itself into natural channels. Those, however, whose
understandings are informed by observation and experience of
nature, not by inspiration from outside nature, may suspect
perhaps that Mary Magdalene, having an excitable brain, was the
victim of a hallucination. She ran to the sepulchre in hot excite
ment, eagerly expectant to see something extraordinary, and she
saw something extraordinary: a flitting impression on sight, pro
bably the “ linen clothes lying there, and the napkin that was
�12
Common Source of Error in
about the head not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped
together in a place by itself,” suggested two angels, and the ideas
of the angels so suggested took visible form, dominating the sense,
just as the gleaming whiteness of a tombstone suggesting the idea
of a ghost to the walker through a churchyard by night was trans
formed instantly into a ghost.
This dominion of the idea over the senses, which has its con
summate effect in the production of hallucination, is really the most
fruitful source of error and defect in common observation, an ever
active, and never to be neglected, cause of fallacy. Men see not
the reality purely, but see it in the coloured light of the notions
which they have of it. Hence no two persons see an event exactly
alike; two witnesses go into the witness-box and give widely different accounts of the same transaction at which they were present
together ; two newspaper reporters, of different politics, believing
themselves sincere and truthful, send home to their respective
employers nearly opposite accounts of the same occurrences; in
each case there is the individual mind behind the eye. Has any
one got a belief, no matter how he got it—whether through his
understanding, as he flatters himself he gets all his beliefs, or
through his feelings, as he actually gets most of them—his mind
yields willing access to all facts which are in keeping with it, and
very Unwilling access to any fact which does not consist with it,
insomuch that the belief comes to determine much of what he sees,
to govern his actual observation of things. The stronger, more
over, the feeling associated with a preconceived idea or belief, the
more completely does it rule sense and vitiate observation. What
infatuated lover ever fails to see “ Helen’s beauty in a brow of
-Egypt?” What excited onlooker at a spectacle of horror could
ever give an accurate account of it ? At one time it was a firmlyrooted superstition that the wounds on the body of a murdered
person would bleed afresh when the murderer was made to touch
the corpse, and witnesses testified frequently to having seen that
happen. Two respectable clergymen, for example, swore at a trial
in the time of Charles I. (1628-9) that the body having been taken
out of the grave and laid on the grass, thirty days after death, and
one of the parties accused of murder required to touch it, “ the
brain of the dead began to have a dew or gentle sweat arise on it,
which increased by degrees till the sweat ran down in drops on
the face; the brow turned to a lively flesh-colour, and the deceased
opened one of her eyes and shut it again ; and this opening of the
eye was done three several times ; she likewise thrust out the ring,
�Seeing and Believing.
13
or marriage finger, three times, and pulled it in again; and the
finger dropped blood from it on the grass.” Here was evidence
against the accused which, if true, must have convinced even him
that he ought to be hanged. Of course, it was not true ; the
witnesses, however, were not wilfully or wittingly deceiving, they
were themselves deceived; they saw not the real thing, but the
imagination of what the real thing was. One may be permitted
to judge, by this example, of the value of the unsifted testimony
of the believer who has seen a miracle. ’Tis not that he has
really seen a miracle, but that. he has made a miracle of what he
has mis-seen.
It may be urged perhaps in respect of miracles that it is ex
tremely improbable, if not impossible, that several persons attest
ing them could be deceived in the same way at the same time. On
the contrary, nothing more easy in certain circumstances : a great
wave of emotion passing through a number of people, as emotion
does pass by the quick infection of sympathy, will carry belief with
it and make them see and testify to a quite impossible occurrence.
Hence miracles have always abounded where there was a great
fever of religious enthusiasm. The greater the heat of feeling the
less the coolness of observation and the more plentiful the mira
cles. Nay, it needs not much heat of feeling to see a miracle if a
number of persons be collected together intently expecting to see
something extraordinary happen: the ghost .seldom fails to appear
where the spectators are gathered together to see it. Every
religion has had its miracles and its multitudinous witnesses to
them. We do not believe it any the more on that account; we
ought indeed to believe it rather the less, since the miracle is pre
sumption, if not proof, of bad observation by the witnesses. The
lowest religion will have the most miracles, a higher religion will
have few of them, and the highest of all will probably have none
at ail. What we may fairly conclude from the testimony of hot
believers is that, by reason of their strong belief, they were not
witnesses to be depended upon, as observers. The interest of
miracles at this day, I take it, is not that which could attach to an
occurrence out of the fixed order of nature, but that which attaches
to the study of the defective, irregular, or actually morbid action
of the human brain, especially under conditions of unusual excite
ment ; it is not whether the body of a dead man which had lain in
the grave until it had begun to putrefy came to life again, but why
people thought and said so. When the belief in miracles has
become extinct they will be received by psychology into its domain
�14
Common Source of Error in
and they will be of lasting interest there. Indeed, it will be a
most instructive study of the future to elucidate and set forth the
exact relations of beliefs in supernatural phenomena to defective
or morbid functions of the brain. Supernaturalism will take its
proper place as an interesting chapter in psychology.
Thus much then with regard to the action which idea may exert
upon the senses; an action plainly so strong sometimes as to sub
due them into a complete subjection to it. In any case it is almost
impossible for one who has a preconceived notion in his mind to
help seeing in an event that only which is agreeable to the notion,
that which sorts or suits with it. Those who have not thought of
this tendency as an active source of fallacy in observation, and
realised how deeply, widely, constantly and unconsciously it works
are not qualified to weigh the value of testimony; they are like
those who should accept without question an assertion that the
trees and grass were blue from one who was looking at the country
through blue spectacles. To denote, moreover, this action of idea
upon sense vaguely as imagination or even as mental carries us no
further forward ; to rest satisfied there is simply to make a word
do duty for a conception; there is neither explanation nor definite
meaning in the statement. Whether we like it or not, we shall
have to acknowledge, first or last, that the process is at bottom
physical, and that we can have no explanation worth thinking
about until we find out what the physical basis is. Unhappily we
are yet a long way from that discovery; we must be satisfied for
the present to figure grossly to ourselves what takes place in the
intimate, most delicate and hidden operations of nerve molecules,
by the help of conceptions derived from the grosser operations in
physics which we can observe and manipulate. When the impres
sion on sense vibrates to the same note as the idea, we may say, it
is perceived and intensifies the idea—that is to say, is assimilated
mentally; when it does not vibrate in unison with it there is no
response, it is not perceived; the active idea responds to the note
that is in harmony with it, just as the string of a harp gives back
in consonant vibrations its proper note when that note is struck
near it.
I proceed now to mark the operation of the same sort of error
in the higher region of thought—in reasoning, that is, about what
we get from the senses when we have got the facts correctly.
Even then we are liable to go all wrong in the opinions or infer
ences which we form. The predominant bias sways the judgment.
Two persons shall have the same facts presented to them, and
�Seeing and Believing.
15
shall not differ as to the facts, yet it is notorious that they will,
according to the bias of their respective opinions, feelings, interests,
differ widely in the conclusions they draw from them, just as two
judges will give very unequal sentences for the same kind of
offence. How is it that the one sees a conclusion plainly and
thinks the other, who does not see it, blinded by prejudice to the
most obvious truth?' The reason of course is that each looks at
the circumstances from his own standpoint, and sees only or
mainly that which is in accord with the bias of his mind, over
looking that which is not; he sees vividly the reasons which
support his opinion, and which the other sees dimly or not at all;
he sees only dimly, or not at all, the reasons which go counter to
it, and which the other sees vividly. Now, how would a third
person, undertaking to bring these two to the same conclusion, go
about to accomplish it ? Certainly he would not treat them as
purely reasoning beings, and encourage them to go on arguing, by
which they would only heat themselves the more, but he would
handle each as if he was anything but an exact reasoning being;
he would not consider only the truth of what he had to say to
him, but would take account of his feelings, principles, prejudices,
character, and endeavour to bring this truth into the best relations
possible with these predominant lines of disposition, making it
pleasing or agreeable—that is to say, able to agree—and so to get
it accepted; he would in fact persuade by agreeing more than by
convincing, remembering the adage—
“ A man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still.”
Dealing in this insinuating way with both he brings them gently
and skilfully over their difference to the same conclusion, and that
the right conclusion if the affair be properly managed. One must
have the feelings of a person engaged in favour of reason before he
can see reason, must prejudice him in favour of an argument
before he can feel the force of it. Is not this a proof how very far
man is from being the good reasoning machine which he imagines
himself?
There is not a day, not an hour of the day perhaps, in any
one’s life which does not yield examples of this sort of biassed
or one-sided perception and reasoning. The moods of the moment
notably colour strongly our views of the character or issue of an
event, notwithstanding that the dry light of reason ought to
demonstrate a plain and certain conclusion. Optimism or pessi
mism is a matter of temperament, not of reason ; life-despair may
�16
Common Source of Error in
be the intellectual expression, and suicide the outcome in act, of
deranged organic feeling in a sadly tuned temperament. In that
extreme state of morbid depression of mind which we call
melancholia the sufferer cannot perceive a ray of hope, a glimmer
of comfort anywhere; he sees every undertaking, every scheme,
moving towards the same goal of ruin; he can follow the argu
ments which prove that his fears are groundless, but they produce
no effect upon him ; they reach his understanding, but they do
not touch his gloom-enshrouded heart, and accordingly they “no
more avail than breath against the wind.” Assuredly we credit
ourselves with a great deal larger measure of reason in the forma
tion and change of our beliefs than ever enters into them. On
the one hand, strong and convincing argument will sometimes not
compel belief; on the other hand, a change will sometimes take
place in an individual’s belief, while the reasons in favour of it are
as strong as ever; as Cardinal Newman has remarked, he does
not know how or when the belief has gone, but he finds out some
day that it is gone ; the perception of the old argument remains,
but some change in feeling in himself arising out of condition, age,
interests, occupation, &c., has worked a change of belief.
I shall not go on now to give any more illustrations from
individual experience, because I am anxious, in the time which
remains at my disposal, to point out how this source of error
in reasoning infects the belief of whole peoples, and leads them
to the most illogical conclusions. Do we not oftentimes see
nations swept by epidemics of feeling and belief, good or bad ?
Have wars been rational undertakings, or have they not been, in
nine cases out of ten, the results of insane suspicion and insaner
folly ? When one looks quietly back at the history of man’s
thoughts and doings upon earth, considering at the same time
his claim to be pre-eminently a reasoning animal, it is impossible
to help being amazed at the utterly irrational belief which pro
fessedly rational beings have formed and sincerely cherished.
More wonder, perhaps, that as they were so irrational as to form
and hold them they were ever rational enough to get rid of them.
It may be said, no doubt, that as they got better knowledge they
abandoned them, but I doubt whether knowledge has nearly so
much to do directly with human progress as we are in the easy
habit of assuming. It has always been as positive a piece of
knowledge as it is now that every one must die—that to be mortal
is not to be immortal—and that when a person is dead and buried
he does not come to life again ; that certainly is as long and sure
�Seeing and Believing.
17
an experience as human beings have had, since it dates from the
beginning of experience ; yet, in spite of that experience, the
greater part of those ranking amongst the most civilized and
enlightened of the earth, and marking therefore the highest water
mark of human progress, solemnly believe at this moment that
there have been men who have not died, and others who, after
being dead, have come to life again. And at great expense, and
through many perils, they send missionaries into all parts of the
earth to teach that wisdom to those whose sad ignorance of it
they compassionate. The very creed of the Christian is that the
God whom he worships became a man, was crucified on the cross,
died and was buried, and on the third day rose again and ascended
into heaven. That is a matter of solemn belief, but can we truly
say that it is a matter of rational knowledge ? Looked at in the
dry light of the understanding, we must admit that there could
not well be a doctrine more improbable, more revolting to reason.
How it strikes the unbiassed minds of those who have not been
trained from youth upwards to accept it we know by the experience
of the Jesuit missionaries in China, who found the dogma of a
crucified God so great an obstacle in the way of conversions that
they quietly suppressed it; they preached Jesus Christ triumphant,
not Jesus Christ crucified. It is beyond question then that there
is in man a power deeper and stronger than knowledge which
decides in some cases what he shall believe, and that the most
complete contradiction of observation and reason which it is
possible to conceive can be accepted as a solemn truth, if it be in
harmony with the prevailing tone or feeling of mind. Thereupon
all the powers of the understanding are brought into play, not to
prove it by a searching trial of its worth, but in order to find out
reasons why it should be believed. Meanwhile, all the reasons in
the world against it will not seriously touch it so long as there is
no fundamental change of feeling : when that takes place, how
ever, the whole fabric of belief tumbles easily to pieces without
any serious assault being made upon it. So far from rational im
probability being a difficulty to theological faith, the greater the
mystery the greater the faith of the true believer, until he reaches
the logical climax of sublime credulity in the acceptance of
Tertullian’s maxim—Credo quia impossible est, I believe it because
it is impossible.
Look back for a moment at the beginnings of Christianity.
How little had knowledge to do with its origin and progress I It
was born of the heart, not of the understanding of mankind, in the
�18
Common Source of Error in
stable not in the Academy or the Lyceum. The great and learned
of that time looked down on it with scorn as a pernicious supersti
tion, and it found acceptance among the poor and ignorant, the
publicans and sinners.
*
Let us note well the meaning of that:
the greatest revolutionary—or rather evolutionary—force which
has moved human society was not the product of the intellect, but
was an outcome of a glowing feeling of the universal brotherhood
of mankind; a feeling so deep and strong and true that it has
inspired and kept alive to this day many beliefs which outrage the
understanding. Can we believe then that the next great revolu
tionary force which shall move society afresh will spring from the
understanding and be governed by its rules? It needs little
reflection, I think, to show that a great social reform will never
come from a Senate or a House of Lords or other sort of upper
chamber, however cultivated and benevolent its members. No;
the impulse will come deep out of the heart of the people,
announcing itself many times beforehand no doubt in blind
yearnings, in wild explosions of social discontent, perhaps in reck
less uprisings of turbulence and violence, a great unreflecting
force, which it should be the function of intelligence to guide in
the right way. You may stop a revolution which has been
hatched in the intellect, by cutting off the heads of the few who
have knowledge ; you will never stop a revolution which has been
bred in the heart of the people by cutting off their heads. Instead
of denouncing wildly the social interest and visionary aspirations
which find outlets in communistic, socialistic, nihilistic, and
similar doctrines and disorders, it would be more wise to try to
understand their meaning; since it may be they are the blind,
* “ It is profitable to remind ourselves,” says Dr. Newman, “ that our Lord
Himself was a sort of smith, and made ploughs and cattle-yokes. Four
Apostles were fishermen, one a petty-tax collector, two husbandmen, one
is said to have been a coachman, and another a market gardener.” Peter
and John are spoken of as “illiterate men and of the lower sort.” Their
converts were of the same rank. They are, says Celsus, “ weavers, shoe
makers, fullers, illiterate clowns.” “ Fools, low-born fellows,” says
Trypho. “ Men collected from the lowest dregs of the people ; ignorant,
credulous women; ” “ unpolished, boors, illiterate, ignorant even of the
sordid arts of life; they do not understand civil matters, how can they
understand divine ? ” says Ccecilius. “ They deceive women, servants and
slaves,” says Julian. The Fathers themselves give similar testimony as to
their brethren. “ Ignorant men, mechanics, and old women,” says Athenagoras. “They are gathered,” says Jerome, “not from the Academy or
the Lyceum, but from the low populace.” Of meaner sort and more de
spised than the Communisis of Paris; and yet they overturned the world!
�Seeing and Believing.
19
instinctive, dimly prophetic impulses of a truth which, coming
from the suffering and brooding heart of society, lies deeper than
knowledge and which knowledge will one day have to reckon
with. No man’s intellect measures his character; from the un
fathomed depths of his being comes not only that which he shall
feel and do but in great measure also that which he shall think.
So it is with humanity as a whole. It is feeling which inspires
and stirs its great pulses, the intellect fashioning the moulds into
which the feeling shall flow. How momentously important then
that the people should have understanding, should learn know
ledge, so that neither craft of superstition, nor craft of ruler, nor
any other craft may again take possession of its forces and turn
them to its profit I
We are so comfortably confident of the stability of our progress
in these days that we do not give the heed we should to the lessons
of the past and consider seriously, as we might well do from time
to time, to what destructive issues uninstructed popular feeling
may one day carry us. There can be little doubt that each of the
mighty nations of the past believed that its kingdom would endure
and that it was impossible its gains should ever be lost to man
kind. But Home, and Greece, and Egypt are now but the
shadows of great names, and the once powerful Empires of the
East have disappeared so completely that even the places where
their mighty cities stood are hardly known. We may be sure that
there were sagacious men in each of these dead nations who fore
saw the end, perceived the causes that were leading straight to it,
and raised their unregarded voices in warning to the people. But
it is the eternal fate of Cassandra to be unheeded. In vain are the
most obvious truths preached to a people possessed by an impulse
of feeling with which they are not in harmony ; the nation which
is declining to its fall is as deaf to the admonitions of the few
thoughtful men who perceive and try to stay its course of folly
as it is blind to the plainest lessons of its own experience;
elementary principles of morality and the commonest maxims of
prudence go down alike before the current of feeling, and the
audacious charlatan who most cleverly flatters, fans, and directs
its sentiments is acclaimed and obeyed as a hero. This has
always been so, and it would be taking much too hopeful a view
of human nature to believe that it will not be so again. In spite
of all the gains of modern knowledge, which we think so certain,
but which, after all, are the real work and possession of only a
few, it is not at all out of the range of possible occurence that a
�20
Common Source of Error in
great turbid wave of superstition may overflow and overwhelm our
civilization, as other civilizations have been overwhelmed before it.
Do you think perhaps that the foundations of modern knowledge
are laid so deep and sure that it is incredible that they should ever
be swept away ? Well, it is a very sanguine belief: one might
have thought it as sure a truth as could well be that a person once
dead will not come to life again, but while multitudes believe the
opposite of that very plain experience, are the foundations of
belief so very sure ? xMen are not moved by knowledge, let me
say again, but by feeling, and were a strong wave of superstitious
feeling to pass through them they would see and believe nothing
that was not in harmony with it, would see and believe every
thing that was in harmony with it, would move on, until it was
spent, a huge devastating force, so far as pure reason was
concerned.
There is something too much of complacent self-deception in the
loud praise which we give to pure truth and in the high-flown devo
tion which we loudly profess to it; we make up by our theoretical
enthusiasm for it for much practical dislike and intolerance of it.
Truth is not so acceptable as illusion, since we live in perpetual
illusion, deceived and deceiving. We seem what we are not, and
make others believe that we think them what they are not. No
one speaks the truth sincerely to another, or talks of him in his
presence as he does in his absence. There is no one who would
not think himself grossly insulted if he had truth told of him, nor
would any one who adopted the practice of speaking the truth
always find it easy to keep himself out of an asylum. We hate the
speaker of truth, although the truth which hurts our self-love may
be most useful to us;. and love the flatterer, although we know the
flattery to be false and injurious. The ardent profession which
we make of a love of pure truth is itself a comfortable illusion
which we create for ourselves. From cradle to grave we are occu
pied—wisely, I dare say—in nursing our illusions, putting away
one, when we have worn it out, to take up another more fitting
the new desires which experience and years give us. If a person
really believed at the outset of life, as he knows at the end of it,
that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, would he have sufficient
motive to live ? Had there been no illusory prospect of Elysian
fields, or happy hunting grounds, or other sort of paradise beyond
the miseries of this world, where those who had suffered much and
unjustly here might hope to find recompense, one may doubt
almost whether faith in virtue could have been kept alive, whether
�*
‘Seeing and Believing.
21
the social organism would have held together ; at any rate, thou
sands of dreary lives would have been more dreary than they were,
thousands of self-sacrifices of work, of wealth, of duty, would never
have been made, the hopes, aspirations, and prayers which have
consoled and sustained thousands of heavy-laden hearts would not
have been. What then will be the consequence if science, as it
seems to threaten, shatters these hopes as illusions ? Will the
multitude be able to bear the pain, to face the fearful void, of so
great a loss ? Will man be able to live what the Bishop of Peter
borough has described lately as. “ a joyless existence, uncheered by
the hope of a happier hereafter, undignified by the consciousness of
divine descent and the heirship of immortality,” if science makes
him sincerely realise, as it seems to be going to work to do, that
he has no hope whatever of a happier hereafter, that his descent is
not divine but simian, that his last heirship is the corruption of
the grave ? Will not the bereaved people, craving for something
to satisfy the needs of the heart which knowledge cannot give, fly
for refuge in despair to some creed or church in which they may
find again the hopes, and consolation, and support of which they
have been robbed ?
Here lies the strength of the position of the Church of Rome.
Possessing an organization the most complete which the world
has ever known, served by its ministers with a devotion which
counts nothing gain that is not its gain, inspired with the theory
that the meanest human soul is worthy of all its energies, it offers
what seems a safe haven of refuge in the midst of the surging tur
moil of doubts, perplexities, and despair, the perfect rest of absolute
truth delivered into its keeping from the beginning: Come unto
me, might be its cry, all ye that are weary of spirit, with many
doubts and heavyladen of heart with the burden of your fears,
and I will give yon rest.
*
It is admirably adapted by its organi
* “ Thus it is sometimes spoken of as a hardship that a Catholic is not
allowed to inquire into the truth of his Creed ; of course he cannot if he
would retain the name of believer. He cannot be both inside and outside
of the Church at once. It is merely common sense to tell him that, if he
is seeking, he has not found. If seeking includes doubting, and doubting
excludes believing, then the Catholic who sets about inquiring thereby
declares that he is not a Catholic. He has already lost faith.”
J. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent. p. 184.
“ For, since we have the truth, and truth cannot change, how can we
possibly change in our belief, except indeed through our own weakness
or. fickleness.” p. 186.
�22
Common Source of Error in
zation, its ordinances, and its doctrine to respond to all the appeals
of the weak side of human nature. And I make no doubt many
will flee to it in the coming conflicts. But not of the people, we
may predict; not of the masses which constitute the foundation
and strength of the social organism. Its converts will come from
the tired votaries of fashion, weary of the dreary frivolities of
their lives, and eager to replace their exhausted desires by new
sentiments; from those who are educated enough to perceive
difficulties and perplexities of thought, without being courageous
and capable enough to face them sincerely and to think them out
thoroughly; from those again who, in the mortal struggle of new
thought for existence, have not the strength of understanding and
character to stay through the course, but falling by the wayside,
eagerly in their need lay hold of the helping hand which authority
holds out to them. These and the like are the classes from which
its converts will mainly come. The strong pulsations of popular feel
ing which make themselves felt in different nations, have no affini
ties with the Church of Rome nor has it shown the least sympathy
with them ; on the contrary they are essentially hostile to it, since
it has committed what seems to an outsider the fatal mistake of
allying itself with caste, privilege, power, and of alienating the
great liberal forces with which lies the determination of the
future : Catholic in name it has lost all claim to be Catholic in
fact. It is a rash thing to prophesy, but if I may venture a
prophesy here, it is that it will be by these great popular forces,
not by the knowledge of the learned, that it will be overthrown in
the final struggle. The French Revolution, momentous as an
event, was perhaps more momentous as a prophesy.
If what I have said thus far be true, what is the function of
those who have faith in the future of mankind, who are sanguine
enough to nurse enthusiastic hopes of its glorious destiny ? As
suredly to work well together, while it is time, to enlighten the
giant, so that when he puts forth his strength he may use it wisely,
to give him the understanding to direct his might in the right way.
Although intellect does not move the world it should guide directly
the forces which do move it, and so modify indirectly, as it will by
degrees, the deeper sources in which they take their instinctive
origin. One thing is certain whatever else may be doubtful: that
the true and honest method to pursue is directly the opposite of
that which the Churches have striven to enforce ; it is not to incul
cate credulity, to stifle doubt, to foster prej udice, in order that the
beliefs which are may continue to be. That method we know to be
�Seeing and Believing.
23
false. It is to seek truth and pursue it, at whatever cost, whether
it bring us sorrow or joy, peace or tribulation. Doubt, be it never
so disquieting, must go before enquiry, and enquiry before the
discovery of new truth. Scepticism is guilt in the eyes only of those
who fear truth, since it is the essential prerequisite of it. It is
impossible to foresee what fate the future has in store for the race
of man on earth; one may fain hope a more peaceful and happy
career than that which he has had in the past, since to look back
through his history from the beginning unto now is to look back
through succeeding chapters of wars, treachery, tortures, cruelties
and atrocities of all sorts and degrees by which “ man’s inhumanity
to man” has “made countless thousands mourn;” a spectacle of
horrors so appalling that, could we compass it in imagination, it
might well warrant the belief, if matters ended now, of a malevo
lent, not a benevolent, scheme of creation. We shall do well to
cherish the hope, or if not the hope the illusion, that matters will
not end here; that a brighter day will come when knowledge and
peace shall spread through the whole earth, and man’s humanity
to man leave few to mourn; that the past traditions of a golden
age, when all was plenty and peace, and the later aspirations for
a Paradise to come, in which sorrow and sin shall be no more,
may be not entire fable and illusion, but essentially dim fore
feelings, the prophetic instincts, of that which one day shall have
a measure of fulfilment upon earth.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
The SOCIETY’S LECTURES NOW PRINTED are .—
Miss Mary E. Beedy. On “Joint Education of Young Men and Women
in the American Schools and Colleges.”
Rev. J. F. Blake. On “The Geological Results of Arctic Exploration.”
Professor G. S. Boulger. On “The Physiological Unity of Plants and
Animals.”
Professor Clifford. On “ The bearing of Morals on Religion.”
On “Right and Wrong; the scientific ground of their distinction.”
Mr. T. W. Rhys Davids. On “ Is life worth having ? and the eternal
Hope. An Answer from Buddha’s First Sermon.”
Mr. W. H. Domvtlle. On “ The Rights and Duties of Parents in regard
to their children’s religious education and beliefs.” With notes.
Mr. A. Elley Finch. On “The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in
the Development of the Human Mind.” With woodcut illustrations.
On “ Civilization; its modern safeguards and future prospects.”
On “The Principles of Political Economy; their scientific basis, and
practical application to Social Well-being.”
On “The English Freethinkers of the Eighteenth Century.”
On “ The Science of Life Worth Living.”
On “The Victories of Science in its Warfare with Superstition.”
Rev. J. Panton Ham. On “The Stage and Drama in relation to Society.”
Professor W. A. Hunter. On “A sketch of the English Law of
Heresy past and present.”
Mr. M. Macfie. On “ The impending contact of Turanian and Aryan
Races;—the Physical and Economic results of Chinese migrations
to the West.”
On “ Religious Parallelisms and Symbolisms, Ancient and Modern.”
Dr. H. Maudsley. On “ Lessons of Materialism.”
On “ The Physical Basis of Will.”
On “ Common Source of Error in Seeing and Believing.”
Mrs. Fenwick Miller. “ The Lessons of a Life :—Harriet Martineau.”
Dr. Andrew Wilson. On “ The Origin of Nerves.”
Dr. G. G. Zerffi. On “ The spontaneous dissolution of Ancient Creeds.”
On “ Dogma and Science.”
On “ The Eastern Question; from a Religious and Social point of view.”
On “ Jesuitism, and the Priest in Absolution.”
On “ Pre-Adamites ; or, Prejudice and Science.”
On “ Long and short Chronologists.”
On “ The Origin of Christianity from a strictly historical point of View.”
The price of each of the above Lectures is 3d., or post-free 3)d.
Mr. A. Elley Finch. On “The Pursuit of Truth.” Cloth 8vo„
pp. 106. “ The Inductive Philosophy.” Cloth 8vo„ pp. 100.
The price of each of these Lectures is 5s., or post-free 5s. 3d.
Two vols. of Lectures (1st and 3rd Selection), cloth-bound, price 5s.
each, or post-free 5s. 6d., contain Lectures otherwise out of print, viz.:
by the late Mr. Geo. Browning and Professor Clifford, and by
Dr. Carpenter, Mr. Clodd, Mr. Edward Maitland, Mr. Plumptre,
and Dr. Zerffi. Table of contents of these vols. sent on application.
Can be obtained (on remittance, by letter, of postage stamps or order) of
the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domvtlle, Esq., 15, Gloucester
Crescent, Hyde Park, W., or at the Hall on the days of Lecturi;
or ofTAv. J. Bumpus, Bookseller, 158, Oxford Street, W.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Common source of error in seeing and believing : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St. George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 27th February, 1881
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Maudsley, Henry [1835-1918]
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Place of Publication: London
Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Presented in Memory of Dr. Moncure D. Conway by his children, July Nineteen hundred & eight. Includes bibliographical references. List of Sunday Society Society lectures on back page.
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1881
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CT87
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Christianity
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Conway Tracts
Fallacies
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COMMON SOURCE OF ERROR IN
I SEEING AND BELIEVING. .
ytrfutt
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 27th FEBRUARY, 1881,
By H. MAUDSLEY, M.D.,
IConban:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�Works by the same Author:
“The Pathology of Mind.” Being the Third Edition of the Second
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�SYLLABUS.
1. The influence of preconceived idea and of feeling to vitiate observation.
Illustrations:
а. Illusions of Sense.
б. Hallucinations of Sense.
c. Erroneous observation.
d. Miracles.
2. The influence of feeling and belief to vitiate reasoning.
a. Individuals.
b. In communities.
3. The relation of feeling to intellect in the progress of the race.
�I
H
?!
�COMMON SOURCE OF ERROR IN
. SEEING AND BELIEVING.
PROPOSE not in this lecture to enumerate and discuss all the
mistakes which we are liable to make when we see and draw
conclusions from what we see—all the fallacies, that is to say, to
which observation and reasoning are exposed; I purpose only to
note and illustrate now one very common and prolific source of
wrong observation and inference. It is certain we do not see and
judge rightly by instinct; too often, although we have eyes, we
see not truly, and although we have reason, we use it to come to
wrong conclusions. Reason, we know, man claims as his almost
exclusive prerogative, defining himself—for he has that advantage
over other animals—as pre-eminently the reasoning animal; and
one need not cavil at the definition so long as it is not understood
to mean that everybody reasons rightly, or even commonly bases
his beliefs upon reason. To say of the great majority of persons
that they reason at all in the highest sense of the word is to say
what is not true, since their opinions are plainly either got by
inheritance, or engrafted by education, or moulded by particular
life-experiences, or imposed by authority of some kind, and are
then worn by them, as they wear their clothes, after the fashion.
Governed by their habits of opinion as they are by their habits of
life they find it as hard a matter to change the one as to change
the other. If all men reasoned truly and adequately on every
subject, it is evident that all men would be agreed, which is not
quite the case; we should not be meeting here this afternoon to
broach opinions which will not be perhaps in harmony with those
which have been preached from a thousand pulpits this morning;
the heresy of yesterday would not be, as it often is, the common
sense of to-day, and the common sense of to-day the nonsense of
to-morrow ; the majority would not have found it necessary to
stone, burn, poison, cut asunder, crucify, or otherwise silence the
voices of the few who, in the succession of the ages, have not
I
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Common Source of Error in
failed to appear from time to time to inspire and to raise men to
higher planes of thought and duty; the world would have been
without the history of its noble army of martyrs of humanity.
This being so, it is a good thing, I think, from time to time to
make a particular study of the common errors to which we are
liable in observation and thinking, and to take note how far
wrong they may carry us. My attention is drawn often and
forcibly to this matter, because, in the course of my professional
work, I meet with persons who, of sound understanding in respect
of all ordinary matters, entertain some extraordinary delusions in
respect of one or two subjects, and cannot be convinced of their
errors by the plainest evidence and argument. Naturally one asks
oneself how it comes to pass that they form and entertain notions,
which are absurd to the common sense of mankind, holding to
them in the face of conclusive disproof, and notwithstanding that
they cannot find a single person in the world to agree with them.
The vulgar saying is that they have “ lost their senses,” but it is
not so; their senses are in full work, but somehow they fail to
perform their proper offices. In seeking the explanations of these
remarkable distractions of mind one comes to perceive that, after
all, these people have only carried to an extreme pitch, to an
insane height, a kind of faulty observation and reasoning which
is common enough among persons who are not in the least out of
their minds. ’Tis not true perhaps, as is sometimes said, that
everybody is a little mad, but it is true that everybody makes day
by day the same sort of errors in observation and reasoning as
those which lead madmen to their delusions.
I go at once to the heart of what I have to say by laying down
the broad proposition that in looking at things a person sees what
he believes he sees, not necessarily that which really is: his notion
of what he sees may correspond with the reality or not, but in
any case he does not see the reality purely; he sees it through the
idea or notion which he has of it. Had I been born blind, and
were my eyes opened at this moment for the first time to see a
human face before me, I should not know it to be such by my
sense of sight alone: I know a human face, when I see it, only
because of the training in seeing which has been going on ever
since I was born, the unceasing, if unconscious, education which
I have had. The idea has been organised gradually in my mind—
abstract, so to speak, from a multitude of impressions—and when
it is stirred into activity by the proper impression made upon
sight it instantly interprets that impression, so that I recognise
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Seeing and Believing.
7
the object. If my idea were very active and at the same time
*
did not fit the reality, it might mislead sight, making me mistake
the identity of a face which I saw—just as Don Quixote, possessed
with his fixed idea of giants and enchanted castles, mistook the
sails of a windmill for the arms of a giant—or even, in a more
extreme case, making me actually see a face where there was no face
at all. You have perhaps seen a person who has been put into
what is called the mesmeric state and noticed the extraordinary
illusions which he can be made to suffer: the operator bids him
take a glass of simple water, assuring him at the same time that it
is exceedingly bitter and nasty, and he forthwith spits it out as if
it were poison, with every expression of disgust; he is told that a
wasp is buzzing about his face and he instantly makes frantic
movements to strike it away; he is introduced to a stranger as his
mother or sister and he immediately embraces her. There is
scarcely a mistake of sense, however extravagant, of which he
may not be made the victim if he is duly susceptible and the
operator skilful and confident. Now what is it which takes place?
This: the idea suggested by the operator becomes so very active
in the subject’s mind, takes such exclusive possession of it, that all
other ideas are inhibited or silenced; they are inactive, in abey
ance, asleep, so to speak, unable therefore to comment upon or
correct it; accordingly the person sees, hears, or otherwise per
ceives all impressions through the active idea, which interprets
them instantly into the language of its own nature; being the
only part of the mind which is then sensible to stimulus and in
function, it cannot of necessity reveal anything which it does notice
but in terms of itself. The person does not see the real thing but
his notion of what the real thing is ; and that does not in this
case accord with what really is. Here then is an experiment
which plainly shows us that an idea in the mind may reach such a
pitch of exclusive activity as to put to silence other ideas and to
completely befool the senses. It is what happens also to the mad
man who, having the delusion that he is the victim of a malignant
persecution, sees or hears his persecutors pursue or threaten him
where no one else can see or hear anything of them.
I now go a step further and note that something of the same
sort takes place in dreams. When we are asleep we see nothing
* The common saying that “seeing is believing” may then be applied
in a double sense—not Sone in the understood sense that we believe by
what we see, but also in the sense that we see by what we believe.
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Common Source of Error in
outside us; our eyes being shut it is impossible we should; never
theless we do see very remarkable scenes if we dream, seeing them
too as if they were outside us and more vividly perhaps than we
do see real things when we are awake. What happens is that the
thoughts of the dreamer as they occur to him become instantly
visible as sensory presentations ; the idea of a thing, so soon as it
becomes active, takes form as the sensible object, is translated into
the outward reality; the idea of a person, for example, becomes
the seen person, the idea of a voice the heard voice, bo before the
dreamer’s eyes as a visible pageant, a scenic show, moves the train
of succeeding ideas; it is as if each vague thought which came
into the mind as we walked along the street absorbed in reverie
was visible as an actual scene ; in which case it is plain we
should be surrounded by an ideal world which would be the real
world to us, while the real world would be faint and shadowy or
quite unperceived. Now this happens the more easily in dreams
for two reasons—first, because the active idea has for the time
almost exclusive possession of the mind, the rest of it being asleep,
and, secondly, because the closure of the senses by sleep to all
outward things, preventing that distraction of them by other
objects which is taking place more or less during waking even in
the deepest reverie, leaves them at the mercy of the idea. Here
there is another instance where an idea or notion vividly experi
enced imposes itself upon sense, becomes an actual hallucination.
Take another case: people don’t see ghosts nowadays when they
go through churchyards by night, as they used often to do in olden
times. Why is that ? ‘ It is because, not believing in ghosts, they
do not expect to see them: they have not in their minds the idea
of a ghost which may step solemnly forth from behind a tombstone
or glide away like a guilty thing ashamed. ’Tis an instance of the
excellent philosophy which is never wanting in Shakspeare, that
he makes Hamlet see his father’s ghost at midnight, when the air
is bitterly cold, not a mouse stirring, on the lonely and rocky
platform before the castle of Elsinore, after he had been informed
in solemnly impressive tones of its previous appearances, when he
himself is there in a tremor of expectation to see it, and immedi
ately after Horatio’s exclamation “ Look, my lord, it comes! ”
Again: there is an event which has happened sometimes to
dying persons, well fitted to make a solemn and startling impres
sion on those about them. When at the point of death or nearly
so, the dying person, gazing intently before him, as if he saw some
one there, may pronounce suddenly the name of a long dead
�Seeing and Believing.
9
relative, exclaim perhaps “ Mother,” and soon after expire. Natu
rally people suppose that the spirit of his dead mother has appeared
to him, and are happy to think that he has joined in a better world
those who were taken away from him in this world. So they take
comfort to themselves when they lose by death one who is near
and dear to them in the belief that although he shall not return to
them they shall go to him. That may or may not be, but certainly
the apparition is not proof of it, since it is no more than one of
the hallucinations which a dying person is liable to have; for when
he is near death and the failing functions of his brain portend
their near impending extinction, wandering thoughts of the far
distant past, impressions of childhood perhaps, seemingly long
effaced, but never actually effaced, may flicker in the mind and,
taking visible form as thoughts take form in dreams, be seen as
visions. You will remember that Shakspeare makes Falstaff,
when dying in a London tavern after a life of the most gross
debauchery, a worn out old libertine, go back in this way to the
memories of more innocent days and “babble of green fields.”*
These broken reversions, as I may call them, are the last ebbing
functions of the brain which, as Shakspeare puts it, then
“ Doth by the idle comments that it makes
Foretell the ending of mortality.”
I might go on to multiply instances of this production of hallu
cination by idea, since they are to be met with in all quarters.
You have heard perhaps that there has lately been an apparition
of the Virgin Mary at Father Ignatius’s Monastery of Llanthonev
Abbey, which was seen first in a meadow by four boys of the
Abbey, after that by a brother of the Abbey, and last of all
by Father Ignatius himself. This is his account of what he
saw:—
“ About eight o’clock on Wednesday evening, the 15th inst. (after
the last service of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin) we all.
* It is very doubtful, however, whether Shakspeare ever wrote what is
now the received text. In the first authentic edition (1823) the words
were not “ ’a babbled of green fields,” but “ a table of green, fields,” which
was nonsense. It was changed by an anonymous critic to “ ’a talked of
green fields,” which Theobald altered into" the present reading. Thirty
years ago, however, an annotated copy of the edition of 1632 was found,
which, among a great number of corrections of the text, substituted for
“ ’a table of green fields,” the words “ on a table of green frieze ”—z.e.,
“ His nose was as sharp as a pen on a table of green frieze.” Dr. Newman
makes use of these discrepancies for the purposes of his argument in
Grammar of Assent (p. 265), and it is from him that I quote them.
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Common Source of Error in
came to the porch door. I held the processional crucifix. With
me were the brothers, Mr. Bouse, and a gentleman from Oxford
who had visited the Monastery for the purpose of endeavouring
to see the vision. The boys were kneeling in front of us, Sister
Janet was kneeling in the meadow. It was a very wet night. We
were singing the ‘Aves.’ We had sung three ‘Aves’ in honour
of the Holy Trinity, and we had just finished a fourth to the
Blessed Virgin, when, all of a sudden, when I was not expecting
anything of the kind, I saw a tremendous outburst of light from
the dark, heavy clouds over the farm building. It seemed to
burst right upon the buildings. The light was all in bulging circles.
In the very centre of the light there appeared, coming down upon
us, a human form. It was a very commanding, stately figure.
I could only see sideways. The face was turned towards the bush.
I could only see it momentarily, as it were in the ‘ twinkling of an
eye.’ But in that moment it stood out so distinctly and startling
that I am sure that it was darker than the light. Had it been
clothed in cloth of silver, or cloth of gold, it might have produced
the same effect—the darkness against the light. There was an
intense reality about the figure. It was momentary, as I before
said, and yet it seemed that it might have been an hour’s vision,
so intensely real was it. In the majesty of the figure, and in its
being dark against the light, it reminded me of Dore’s picture,
‘ The triumph of Christianity over Paganism.’ There were
flashings of light about the figure. In a moment, as I looked, it
vanished. Before it vanished it had appeared as if it would have
descended upon the church door or the church roof. I feel sure
that it must have been the figure of the Blessed Virgin, because,
although I could not discern the dress it wore, I could see that it
was fully draped; whereas in the visions which others have seen,
when they have seen a male figure, it has always appeared with
simply a cloth round the loins, as our Lord is represented in
baptism, and at other times. I also feel sure that it was the
Virgin, because the figure appeared immediately after we had
sung the ‘ Ave ’ in her honour. The figure also had its face
turned towards the bush, where our Ladye had first been seen. I
have further confirmation in the fact that about two or three,
minutes afterwards the Blessed Virgin’s figure was seen by the
gentleman who was watching with us, and by one of the boys,
nearer to the ground.” *
South Wales Daily News, September 13th and 27th, 1880.
�Seeing and Believing.
11
“ These,” he says, “ are extraordinary and absolute facts. The
sceptic may and will scoff, but his scoffing will not explain or
diminish the truth or supernatural character of these absolute and
incontrovertible facts * * * No amount of contradiction, ridicule,
or unbelief can alter the fact that Monday, August 30th, 1880, be
tween the hours of 9 and 11 a.m., the Blessed Virgin appeared in
dazzling light to four boys and did what no earthly being could do
before their eyes.” With such positive and incontrovertible testi
mony of eye-witnesses, are you of so little faith as to doubt that
the Blessed Virgin appeared ? Probably you have great doubts, as
I have; and perhaps I may venture to think that I shall carry your
sympathetic doubts with me in my sceptical interpretation of
another vivid vision of an apparition in circumstances particularly
favourable to its occurrence.
The vision in this case happened to a woman whom we may
believe to have been predisposed in some measure to hallucination,
since we are told of her that she had once had seven devils cast
out of her.; a story which, in modern scientific interpretation,
means that she had once been insane and had recovered. • In all
likelihood, therefore, she was one of those persons, susceptible or
sensitive, as mesmerists call them, whose unstably balanced nervecentres were easily liable to take on that sort of irregular action
which issues in hallucination and delusion. The woman I refer
to is Mary Magdalene, who visited the sepulchre of Christ on the
third day after His burial, and who, according to the gospel of St.
John, saw two angels in white sitting, the one at the head and the
other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain. I say accord
ing to John, because the stories of the resurrection told by the
writers of the different gospels differ considerably in details;
amongst other things, not agreeing as to whether there was one
angel or whether there were two angels, or as to the persons who
saw the apparition or apparitions. Discrepancies in the stories of
supernatural phenomena are not of course to be wondered at;
they are the natural results of an inspiration more than natural
pouring itself into natural channels. Those, however, whose
understandings are informed by observation and experience of
nature, not by inspiration from outside nature, may suspect
perhaps that Mary Magdalene, having an excitable brain, was the
victim of a hallucination. She ran to the sepulchre in hot excite
ment, eagerly expectant to see something extraordinary, and she
saw something extraordinary: a flitting impression on sight, pro
bably the “ linen clothes lying there, and the napkin that was
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Common Source of Error in
about the head not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped
together in a place by itself,” suggested two angels, and the ideas
of the angels so suggested took visible form, dominating the sense,
just as the gleaming whiteness of a tombstone suggesting the idea
of a ghost to the walker through a churchyard by night was trans
formed instantly into a ghost.
This dominion of the idea over the senses, which has its con
summate effect in the production of hallucination, is really the most
fruitful source of error and defect in common observation, an ever
active, and never to be neglected, cause of fallacy. Men see not
the reality purely, but see it in the coloured light of the notions
which they have of it. Hence no two persons see an event exactly
alike; two witnesses go into the witness-box and give widely dif
ferent accounts of the same transaction at which they were present
together; two newspaper reporters, of different politics, believing
themselves sincere and truthful, send home to their respective
employers nearly opposite accounts of the same occurrences ; in
each case there is the individual mind behind the eye. Has any
one got a belief, no matter how he got it—whether through his
understanding, as he flatters himself he gets all his beliefs, or
through his feelings, as he actually gets most of them—his mind
yields willing access to all facts which are in keeping with it, and
very unwilling access to any fact which does not consist with it,
insomuch that the belief comes to determine much of what he sees,
to govern his actual observation of things. The stronger, more
over, the feeling associated with a preconceived idea or belief, the
more completely does it rule sense and vitiate observation. What
infatuated lover ever fails to see “ Helen’s beauty in a brow of
Egypt?” What excited onlooker at a spectacle of horror could
ever give an accurate account of it ? At one time it was a firmlyrooted superstition that the wounds on the body of a murdered
person would bleed afresh when the murderer was made to touch
the corpse, and witnesses testified frequently to having seen that
happen. Two respectable clergymen, for example, swore at a trial
in the time of Charles I. (1628-9) that the body having been taken
out of the grave and laid on the grass, thirty days after death, and
one of the parties accused of murder required to touch it, “the
brain of the dead began to have a dew or gentle sweat arise on it,
which increased by degrees till the sweat ran down in drops on
the face; the brow turned to a lively flesh-colour, and the deceased
-opened one of her eyes and shut it again ; and this opening of the
eye was done three several times ; she likewise thrust out the ring,
�Seeing and Believing.
13
Or marriage finger, three times, and pulled it in again; and the
finger dropped blood from it on the grass.” Here was evidence
against the accused which, if true, must have convinced even him
that he ought to be hanged. Of course, it was not true; the
witnesses, however, were not wilfully or wittingly deceiving, they
were themselves deceived; they saw not the real thing, but the
imagination of what the real thing was. One may be permitted
to judge, by this example, of the value of the unsifted testimony
of the believer who has seen a miracle. ’Tis not that he has
really seen a miracle, but that he has made a miracle of what he
has mis-seen.
,lt may be urged perhaps in respect of miracles that it is ex
tremely improbable, if not impossible, that several persons attest
ing them could be deceived in the same way at the same time. On
the contrary, nothing more easy in certain circumstances : a great
wave of emotion passing through a number of people, as emotion
does pass by the quick infection of sympathy, will carry belief with
it and make them see and testify to a quite impossible occurrence.
Hence miracles have always abounded where there was a great
fever of religious enthusiasm. The greater the heat of feeling the
less the coolness of observation and the more plentiful the mira
cles. Hay, it needs not much heat of feeling to see a miracle if a
number of persons be collected together intently expecting to see
something extraordinary happen: the ghost seldom fails to appear
where the spectators are gathered together to see it. Every
religion has had its miracles and its multitudinous witnesses to
them. We do not believe it any the more on that account; we
ought indeed to believe it rather the less, since the miracle is pre
sumption, if not proof, of bad observation by the witnesses. The
lowest religion will have the most miracles, a higher religion will
have few of them, and the highest of all will probably have none
at all. What we may fairly conclude from the testimony of hot
believers is that, by reason of their strong belief, they were not
witnesses to be depended upon, as observers. The interest of
miracles at this day, I take it, is not that which could attach to an
occurrence out of the fixed order of nature, but that which attaches
to the study of the defective, irregular, or actually morbid action
of the human brain, especially under conditions of unusual excite
ment ; it is not whether the body of a dead man which had lain in
the grave until it had begun to putrefy came to life again, but why
people thought and said so. When the belief in miracles has
become extinct they will be received by psychology into its domain
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Common Source of Error in
and they will be of lasting interest there. Indeed, it will be a
most instructive study of the future to elucidate and set forth the
exact relations of beliefs in supernatural phenomena to defective
or morbid functions of the brain. Supernaturalism will take its
proper place as an interesting chapter in psychology.
Thus much then with regard to the action which idea may exert
upon the senses; an action plainly so strong sometimes as to sub
due them into a complete subjection to it. In any case it is almost
impossible for one who has a preconceived notion in his mind to
help seeing in an event that only which is agreeable to the notion,
that which sorts or suits with it. Those who have not thought of
this tendency as an active source of fallacy in observation, and
realised how deeply, widely, constantly and unconsciously it works
are not qualified to weigh the value of testimony; they are like
those who should accept without question an assertion that the
trees and grass were blue from one who was looking at the country
through blue spectacles. To denote, moreover, this action of idea
upon sense vaguely as imagination or even as mental carries us no
further forward; to rest satisfied there is simply to make a word
do duty for a conception; there is neither explanation nor definite
meaning in the statement. Whether we like it or not, we shall
have to acknowledge, first or last, that the process is at bottom
physical, and that we can have no explanation worth thinking
about until we find out what the physical basis is. Unhappily we
are yet a long way from that discovery; we must be satisfied for
the present to figure grossly to ourselves what takes place in the
intimate, most delicate and hidden operations of nerve molecules,
by the help of conceptions derived from the grosser operations in
physics which we can observe and manipulate. When the impres
sion on sense vibrates to the same note as the idea, we may say, it
is perceived and intensifies the idea—that is to say, is assimilated
mentally; when it does not vibrate in unison with it there is no
response, it is not perceived; the active idea responds to the note
that is in harmony with it, just as the string of a harp gives back
in consonant vibrations its proper note when that note is struck
near it.
I proceed now to mark the operation of the same sort of error
in the higher region of thought—in reasoning, that is, about what
we get from the senses when we have got the facts correctly.
Even then we are liable to go all wrong in the opinions or infer
ences which we form. The predominant bias sways the judgment.
Two persons shall have the same facts presented to them, and
�Seeing and Believing.
15
shall not differ as to the facts, yet it is notorious that they will,
according to the bias of their respective opinions, feelings, interests,
differ widely in the conclusions they draw from them, just as two
judges will give very unequal sentences for the same kind of
offence. How is it that the one sees a conclusion plainly and
thinks the other, who does not see it, blinded by prejudice to the
most obvious truth ? The reason of course is that each looks at
the circumstances from his own standpoint, and sees only or
mainly that which is in accord with the bias of his mind, over
looking that which is not; he sees vividly the reasons which
support his opinion, and which the other sees dimly or not at all;
he sees only dimly, or not at all, the reasons which go counter to
it, and which the other sees vividly. Now, how would a third
person,'undertaking to bring these two to the same conclusion, go
about to accomplish it ? Certainly he would not treat them as
purely reasoning beings, and encourage them to go on arguing, by
which they would only heat themselves the more, but he would
handle each as if he was anything but an exact reasoning being;
he would not consider only the truth of what he had to say to
him, but would take account of his feelings, principles, prejudices,
character, and endeavour to bring this truth into the best relations
possible with these predominant lines of disposition, making it
pleasing or agreeable—that is to say, able to agree—and so to get
it accepted; he would in fact persuade by agreeing more than by
convincing, remembering the adage—
•
“ A man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still.”
Dealing in this insinuating way with both he brings them gently
and skilfully over their difference to the same conclusion, and that
the right conclusion if the affair be properly managed. One must
have the feelings of a person engaged in favour of reason before he
can see reason, must prejudice him in favour of an argument
before he can feel the force of it. Is not this a proof how very far
man is from being the good reasoning machine which he imagines
himself?
There is not a day, not an hour of the day perhaps, in any
one’s life which does not yield examples of this sort of biassed
or one-sided perception and reasoning. The moods of the moment
notably colour strongly our views of the character or issue of an
event, notwithstanding that the dry light of reason ought to
demonstrate a plain and certain conclusion. Optimism or pessi
mism is a matter of temperament, not of reason; life-despair may
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Common Source of Error in
be the intellectual expression, and suicide the outcome in act, of
deranged organic feeling in a sadly tuned temperament. In that
extreme state of morbid depression of mind which we call
melancholia the sufferer cannot perceive a ray of hope, a glimmer
of comfort anywhere; he sees every undertaking, every scheme,
moving towards the same goal of ruin; he can follow the argu
ments which prove that his fears are groundless, but they produce
no effect upon him ; they reach his understanding, but they do
not touch his gloom-enshrouded heart, and accordingly they “ no
more avail than breath against the wind.” Assuredly we credit
ourselves with a great deal larger measure of reason in the forma
tion and change of our beliefs than ever enters into them. On
the one hand, strong and convincing argument will sometimes not
compel belief; on the other hand, a change will sometimes take
place in an individual’s belief, while the reasons in favour of it are
as strong as ever; as Cardinal Newman has remarked, he does
not know how or when the belief has gone, but he finds out some
day that it is gone ; the perception of the old argument remains,
but some change in feeling in himself arising out of condition, age,
interests, occupation, &c., has worked a change of belief.
I shall not go on now to give any more illustrations from
individual experience, because I am anxious, in the time which
remains at my disposal, to point out how this source of error
in reasoning infects the belief of whole peoples, and leads them
to the most illogical conclusions. Do we not oftentimes see
nations swept by epidemics of feeling and belief, good or bad?
Have wars been rational undertakings, or have they not been, in
nine cases out of ten, the results of insane suspicion and insaner
folly ? When one looks quietly back at the history of man’s
thoughts and doings upon earth, considering at the same time
his claim to be pre-eminently a reasoning animal, it is impossible
to help being amazed at the utterly irrational belief which pro
fessedly rational beings have formed and sincerely cherished.
More wonder, perhaps, that as they were so irrational as to form
and hold them they were ever rational enough to get rid of them.
It may be said, no doubt, that as they got better knowledge they
abandoned them, but I doubt whether knowledge has nearly so
much to do directly with human progress as we are in the easy
habit of assuming. It has always been as positive a piece of
knowledge as it is now that every one must die—that to be mortal
is not to be immortal—and that when a person is dead and buried
he does not come to life again ;■ that certainly is as long and sure
�Seeing and Believing.
17
an experience as human beings have had, since it dates from the
beginning of experience ; yet, in spite of that experience, the
greater part of those ranking amongst the most civilized and
enlightened of the earth, and marking therefore the highest water
mark of human progress, solemnly believe at this moment that
there have been men’ who have not died, and others who, after
being dead, have come to life again. And at great expense, and
through many perils, they send missionaries into all parts of the
earth to teach that wisdom to those whose sad ignorance of it
they compassionate. The very creed of the Christian is that the
God whom he worships became a man, was crucified on the cross,
died and was buried, and on the third day rose again and ascended
into heaven. That is a matter of solemn belief, but can we truly
say that it is a matter of rational knowledge ? Looked at in the
dry light of the understanding, we must admit that there could
not well be a doctrine more improbable, more revolting to reason.
How it strikes the unbiassed minds of those who have not been
trained from youth upwards to accept it we know by the experience
of the Jesuit missionaries in China, who found the dogma of a
crucified God so great an obstacle in the way of conversions that
they quietly suppressed it; they preached Jesus Christ triumphant,
not Jesus Christ crucified. It is beyond question then that there
is in man a power deeper and stronger than knowledge which
decides in some cases what he shall believe, and that the most
complete contradiction of observation and reason which it is
possible to conceive can be accepted as a solemn truth, if it be in
harmony with the prevailing tone or feeling of mind. Thereupon
all the powers of the understanding are brought into play, not to
prove it by a searching trial of its worth, but in order to find out
reasons why it should be believed. Meanwhile, all the reasons in
the world against it will not seriously touch it so long as there is
no fundamental change of feeling: when that takes place, how
ever, the whole fabric of belief tumbles easily to pieces without
any serious assault being made upon it. So far from rational im
probability being a difficulty to theological faith, the greater the
mystery the greater the faith of the true believer, until he reaches
the logical climax of sublime credulity in the acceptance of
Tertullian’s maxim—Credo quia impossibile est, I believe it because
it is impossible.
Look back for a moment at the beginnings of Christianity.
How little had knowledge to do with its origin and progress! It
was born of the heart, not of the understanding of mankind, in the
�18
Common Source of Error in
stable not in the Academy or the Lyceum. The great and learned
of that time looked down on it with scorn as a pernicious supersti
tion, and it found acceptance among the poor and ignorant, the
publicans and sinners.
*
Let us note well the meaning of that:
the greatest revolutionary—or rather evolutionary—force which
has moved human society was not the product of the intellect, but
was an outcome of a glowing feeling of the universal brotherhood
of mankind; a feeling so deep and strong and true that it has
inspired and kept alive to this day many beliefs which outrage the
understanding. Can we believe then that the next great revolu
tionary force which shall move society afresh will spring from the
understanding and be governed by its rules? It needs little
reflection, I think, to show that a great social reform will never
come from a Senate or a House of Lords or other sort of upper
chamber, however cultivated and benevolent its members. No;
the impulse will come deep out of the heart of the people,
announcing itself many times beforehand no doubt in blind
yearnings, in wild explosions of social discontent, perhaps in reck
less uprisings of turbulence and violence, a great unreflecting
force, which it should be the function of intelligence to guide in
the right way. You may stop a revolution which has been
hatched in the intellect, by cutting off the heads of the few who
have knowledge; you will never stop a revolution which has been
bred in the heart of the people by cutting off their heads. Instead
of denouncing •wildly the social interest and visionary aspirations
which find outlets in communistic, socialistic, nihilistic, and
similar doctrines and disorders, it would be more wise to try to
understand their meaning; since it may be they are the blind,
* “ It is profitable to remind ourselves,” says Dr. Newman, “ that our Lord
Himself was a sort of smith, and made ploughs and cattle-yokes. Four
Apostles were fishermen, one a petty-tax collector, two husbandmen, one
is said to have been a coachman, and another a market gardener.” Peter
and John are spoken of as “ illiterate men and of the lower sort.” Their
converts were of the same rank. They are, says Celsus, “ weavers, shoe
makers, fullers, illiterate clowns.” “Fools, low-born fellows,” says
Trypho. “ Men collected from the lowest dregs of the people; ignorant,
credulous women; ” “ unpolished, boors, illiterate, ignorant even of the
sordid arts of life; they do not understand civil matters, how can they
understand divine ? ” says Coecilius. “ They deceive women, servants and
slaves,” says Julian. The Fathers themselves give similar testimony as to
their brethren. “ Ignorant men, mechanics, and old women,” says Athenagoras. “They are gathered,” says Jerome, “not from the Academy or
the Lyceum, but from the low populace.” Of meaner sort and more de
spised than the Communisis of Paris; and yet they overturned the world!
�Seeing and Believing.
19
instinctive, dimly prophetic impulses of a truth which, coming
from the suffering and brooding heart of society, lies deeper than
knowledge and which knowledge will one day have to reckon
with. No man’s intellect measures his character; from the un
fathomed depths of his being comes not only that which he shall
feel and do but in great measure also that which he shall think.
So it is with humanity as a whole. It is feeling which inspires
and stirs its great pulses, the intellect fashioning the moulds into
which the feeling shall flow. How momentously important then
that the people should have understanding, should learn know
ledge, so that neither craft of superstition, nor craft of ruler, nor
any other craft may again take possession of its forces and turn
them to its profit!
We are so comfortably confident of the stability of our progress
in these days that we do not give the heed we should to the lessons
of the past and consider seriously, as we might well do from time
to time, to what destructive issues uninstructed popular feeling
may one day carry us. There can be little doubt that each of the
mighty nations of the past believed that its kingdom would endure
and that it was impossible its gains should ever be lost to man
kind. But Home, and Greece, and Egypt are now but the
shadows of great names, and the once powerful Empires of the
East have disappeared so completely that even the places where
their mighty cities stood are hardly known. We may be sure that
there were sagacious men in each of these dead nations who fore
saw the end, perceived the causes that were leading straight to it,
and raised their unregarded voices in warning to the people. But
it is the eternal fate of Cassandra to be unheeded. In vain are the
most obvious truths preached to a people possessed by an impulse
of feeling with which, they are not in harmony; the nation which
is declining to its fall is as deaf to the admonitions of the few
thoughtful men who perceive and try to stay its course of folly
as it is blind to the plainest lessons of its own experience;
elementary principles of morality and the commonest maxims of
prudence go down alike before the current of feeling, and the
audacious charlatan who most cleverly flatters, fans, and directs
its sentiments is acclaimed and obeyed as a hero. This has
always been so, and it would be taking much too hopeful a view
of human nature to believe that it will not be so again. In spite
of all the gains of modern knowledge, which we think so certain,
but which, after all, are the real work and possession of only a
few, it is not at all out of the range of possible occurence that a
�20
Common Source of Error in
great turbid wave of superstition may overflow and overwhelm our
civilization, as other civilizations have been overwhelmed before it.
Do you think perhaps that the foundations of modern knowledge
are laid so deep and sure that it is incredible that they should ever
be swept away? Well, it is a very sanguine belief: one might
have thought it as sure a truth as could well be that a person once
dead will not come to life again, but while multitudes believe the
opposite of that very plain experience, are the foundations of
belief so very sure ? Men are not moved by knowledge, let me
say again, but by feeling, and were a strong wave of superstitious
feeling to pass through them they would see and believe nothing
that was not in harmony with it, would see and believe every
thing that was in harmony with it, would move on, until it was
spent, a huge devastating force, so far as pure reason was
concerned.
There is something too much of complacent self-deception in the
loud praise which we give to pure truth and in the high-flown devo
tion which we loudly profess to it; we make up by our theoretical
enthusiasm for it for much practical dislike and intolerance of it.
Truth is not so acceptable as illusion, since we live in perpetual
illusion, deceived and deceiving. We seem what we are not, and
make others believe that we think them what they are not. No
one speaks the truth sincerely to another, or talks of him in his
presence as he does in his absence. There is no one who would
not think himself grossly insulted if he had truth told of him, nor
would any one who adopted the practice of speaking the truth
always find it easy to keep himself out of an asylum. We hate the
speaker of truth, although the truth which hurts our self-love may
be most useful to us; and love the flatterer, although we know the
flattery to be false and injurious. The ardent profession which
we make of a love of pure truth is itself a comfortable illusion
which we create for ourselves. From cradle to grave we are occu
pied—wisely, I dare say—in nursing our illusions, putting away
one, when we have worn it out, to take up another more fitting
the new desires which experience and years give us. If a person
really believed at the outset of life, as he knows at the end of it,
that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, would he have sufficient
motive to live ? Had there been no illusory prospect of Elysian
fields, or happy hunting grounds, or other sort of paradise beyond
the miseries of this world, where those who had suffered much and
unjustly here might hope to find recompense, one may doubt
almost whether faith in virtue could have been kept alive, whether
�Seeing and Believing.
21
the social organism, would have held together ; at any rate, thou
sands of dreary lives would have been more dreary than they were,
thousands of self-sacrifices of work, of wealth, of duty, would never
have been made, the hopes, aspirations, and' prayers which have
consoled and sustained thousands of heavy-laden hearts would not
have been. What then will be the consequence if science, as it
seems to threaten, shatters these hopes as illusions ? Will the
multitude be able to bear the pain, to face the fearful void, of so
great a loss ? Will man be able to live what the Bishop of Peter
borough has described lately as “ a joyless existence, uncheered by
the hope of a happier hereafter, undignified by the consciousness of
divine descent and the heirship of immortality,” if science makes
him sincerely realise, as it seems to be going to work to do, that
he has no hope whatever of a happier hereafter, that his descent is
not divine but simian, that his last heirship is the corruption of
the grave ? Will not the bereaved people, craving for something
to satisfy the needs of the heart which knowledge cannot give, fly
for refuge in despair to some creed or church in which they may
find again the hopes, and consolation, and support of which they
have been robbed ?
Here lies the strength of the position of the Church of Rome.
Possessing an organization the most complete which the world
has ever known, served by its ministers with a devotion which
counts nothing gain that is not its gain, inspired with the theory
that the meanest human soul is worthy of all its energies, it offers
what seems a safe haven of refuge in the midst of the surging tur
moil of doubts, perplexities, and despair, the perfect rest of absolute
truth delivered into its keeping from the beginning: Come unto
me, might be its cry, all ye that are weary of spirit, with many
doubts and heavyladen of heart with the burden of your fears,
and I will give yon rest.
*
It is admirably adapted by its organi
* “ Thus it is sometimes spoken of as a hardship that a Catholic is not
allowed to inquire into the truth of his Creed; of course he cannot if he
would retain the name of believer. He cannot be both inside and outside
of the Church at once. It is merely common sense to tell him that, if he
is seeking, he has not found. If seeking includes doubting, and doubting
excludes believing, then the Catholic who sets about inquiring thereby
declares that he is not a Catholic. He has already lost faith.”
J. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent, p. 184.
“ For, since we have the truth, and truth cannot change, how can we
possibly change in our belief, except indeed through our own weakness
or fickleness.” p. 186.
�iMMMiMM*
22
Common Source of Error in
zation, its ordinances, and its doctrine to respond to all the appeals
of the weak side of human nature. And I make no doubt many
will flee to it in the coming conflicts. But not of the people, we
may predict; not of the masses which constitute the foundation
and strength of the social organism. Its converts will come from
the tired votaries of fashion, weary of the dreary frivolities of
their lives, and eager to replace their exhausted desires by new
sentiments; from those who are educated enough to perceive
difficulties and perplexities of thought, without being courageous
and capable enough to face them sincerely and to think them out
thoroughly; from those again who, in the mortal struggle of new
thought for existence, have not the strength of understanding and
character to stay through the course, but falling by the wayside,
eagerly in their need lay hold of the helping hand which authority
holds out to them. These and the like are the classes from which
its converts will mainly come. The strong pulsations of popular feel
ing which make themselves felt in different nations, have no affini
ties with the Church of Rome nor has it shown the least sympathy
with them ; on the contrary they are essentially hostile to it, since
it has committed what seems to an outsider the fatal mistake of
allying itself with caste, privilege, power, and of alienating the
great liberal forces with which lies the determination of the
future : Catholic in name it has lost all claim to be Catholic in
fact. It is a rash thing to prophesy, but if I may venture a
prophesy here, it is that it will be by these great popular forces,
not by the knowledge of the learned, that it will be overthrown in
the final struggle. The French Revolution, momentous as an
event, was perhaps more momentous as a prophesy.
If what I have said thus far be true, what is the function of
those who have faith in the future of mankind, who are sanguine
enough to nurse enthusiastic hopes of its glorious destiny ? As
suredly to work well together, while it is time, to enlighten the
giant, so that when he puts forth his strength he may use it wisely,
to give him the understanding to direct his might in the right way.
Although intellect does not move the world it should guide directly
the forces which do move it, and so modify indirectly, as it will by
degrees, the deeper sources in which they take their instinctive
origin. One thing is certain whatever else may be doubtful: that
the true and honest method to pursue is directly the opposite of
that which the Churches have striven to enforce; it is not to incul
cate credulity, to stifle doubt, to foster prejudice, in order that the
beliefs which are may continue to be. That method we know to be
�Seeing and Believing.
23
false. It is to seek truth and pursue it, at whatever cost, whether
it bring us sorrow or joy, peace or tribulation. Doubt, be it never
so disquieting, must go before enquiry, and enquiry before the
discovery of new truth. Scepticism is guilt in the eyes only of those
who fear truth, since it is the essential prerequisite of it. It is
impossible to foresee what fate the future has in store for the race
of man on earth; one may fain hope a more peaceful and happy
career than that which he has had in the past, since to look back
through his history from the beginning unto now is to look back
through succeeding chapters of wars, treachery, tortures, cruelties
and atrocities of all sorts and degrees by which “ man’s inhumanity
to man” has “made countless thousands mourn;” a spectacle of
horrors so appalling that, could we compass it in imagination, it
might well warrant the belief, if matters ended now, of a malevo
lent, not a benevolent, scheme of creation. We shall do well to
cherish the hope, or if not the hope the illusion, that matters will
not end here; that a brighter day will come when knowledge and
peace shall spread through the whole earth, and man’s humanity
to man leave few to mourn; that the past traditions of a golden
age, when all was plenty and peace, and the later aspirations for
a Paradise to come, in which sorrow and sin shall be no more,
may be not entire fable and illusion, but essentially dim fore
feelings, the prophetic instincts, of that which one day shall have
a measure of fulfilment upon earth.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Common source of error in seeing and believing: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday Afternoon, 27th February 1881
Creator
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Maudsley, Henry [1835-1918]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Contains bibliographical references. Publisher's series list on unnumbered pages at the end.
Publisher
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The Sunday Lecture Society
Date
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1902
Identifier
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G3424
Subject
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Miracles
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />Public Domain Mark This work (Common source of error in seeing and believing: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday Afternoon, 27th February 1881), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Christian church
Fallacies
Miracles
New Testament