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C l a s s i c A p o l o g e t i c s
THE APPROACH TO THE SKEPTIC
By HILAIRE BELLOC
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This Rock
Volume 5, Number 2
 February 1994 
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SKEPTICISM may be defined as
that attitude of the mind which advises us to reject any unaccustomed
statement. By "unaccustomed" I mean "that which the
hearer does not happen to have acquaintance with, so that it jars
with that conception of reality which he has formed through his experience."
For instance, supposing a man who died forty years ago
had come to life again, and I told him I had flown through the air
from Beauvais to Croydon in a machine, he would presumably doubt that
statement. His doubt would be an example of skepticism. Flying through
the air in a machine was outside all the experience which he had had
of earthly conditions.
In thus defining skepticism, I do not include, of course,
the larger meaning of the term, which extends it to a doubt upon one's
own existence or the existence of any reality outside one's own mind.
I am talking of only what might be called "natural skepticism,"
the twin to "natural religion," the skepticism normal to
the human mind. Again, it is not skepticism to doubt something which
is a contradiction in terms or which is contrary to the laws of thought.
We form, by the habit of experience, a certain vague
picture of reality, and that which does not conform to it we doubt.
If the thing told us is too violently in contrast with our common
experience, we not only doubt, we deny.
Skepticism, in the sense in which I am using the word,
is eminently sane; it is native to our race, and for that matter necessary
to the preservation of it and of the individual. For to accept habitually
any absurd affirmation--as, that it would be safe to jump out
of a fourth-story window because one was being prayed for--would
lead to immediate disaster.
I insist at the outset on this natural and healthy character
in human skepticism, because it is the foundation of the thesis I
desire to propose, which is this: that those who would present the
truths of the faith to those unacquainted with the process by which
we come to hold them must not only take natural skepticism for granted,
but must respect it. What is more, we of the faith do well to safeguard
in ourselves this robust and healthy quality, for
in the absence or weakness of it we may come to accept nonsense even
in sacred things, and, what is perhaps worse, we shall weaken our
reasoning faculty.
Nothing does greater harm to the prestige of the faith,
to our chances of presenting it successfully to our fellow beings,
or, for that matter, to their opinion of our judgment in holding what
they do not hold, than the attitude (once commoner than it now is,
but still common) which denounces with a sort of horror the rejection
by another of what is, to the speaker, sacred.
The horror is excusable in those to whom the negation
comes as a sort of shock, those, that is, who have had no personal
experience of unbelief in others, who have lived sheltered lives,
and who, on hearing denied what is to them all in all, are moved to
an irrational anger--but that anger is irrational all the same.
The truths propounded upon the authority of the Church
consist in part of what we
may expect any average man to accept, for they consist in part
of truths consonant with common experience, as, for
instance, the Catholic truth that right and wrong are realities, not
pathetic illusions.
But a great number of Catholic truths and the Catholic
system as a whole, based as it is upon mysteries and particularly
upon the supreme mystery of the Incarnation, cannot be accepted as
a matter of course by those to whom it is unfamiliar. To expect them
to do so--even to expect them not to be hostile--is much more
unnatural on the part of one who believes than is the skepticism of
one who does not.
Now, our object in appreciating the nature of skepticism
is to combat it successfully, at least in the things that count. Complete
success in this may be called the conversion of the skeptic to Catholic
truth. When we have taken the first step and appreciated the nature
of skepticism, that it is "doubt of the unaccustomed statement,"
we can approach the task of convincing the skeptic, but, until we
have taken that first step, we cannot approach his conversion.
It is a falsehood and a folly to tell the plain man,
who has no conception of what the faith is all about, that his rejection
of its unaccustomed statements is evil. It is even wrong to call him
blind. He is no more blind than a man is blind who does not see the
stars by daylight.
But in our approach to the task of convincing the skeptic
we must begin by distinguishing between two kinds of skepticism, which
do not merge one into the other by gradual degrees, but which are
totally distinct in kind, and which may be called, the one "the
skepticism of the intelligent," the other "the skepticism
of the stupid."
The skepticism of the stupid is that denial of an unaccustomed
statement which is based upon an undefined, but nonetheless real,
belief that the hearer is possessed of universal knowledge. It is
a common error in our day. The test of this kind of skepticism (which,
like other manifestations of stupidity, presents a formidable obstacle
to human conversation) is the misuse of the word "reason."
When a man tells you that it "stands to reason"
that such and such a thing, to which he is unaccustomed, cannot
have taken place, his remark has no intellectual
value whatever. Not only would he be unable to analyze his "reasons"
for rejecting the statement, but he would, if pressed, be bound to
give you motives based upon mere emotion. For instance, if a man tells
you it "stands to reason" that a just God could not allow
men to lose their souls, he suffers from the skepticism of the stupid.
The skepticism proceeding from intelligence is of an
exactly opposite nature.
Intelligence may be measured by the capacity of separating
categories. Thus, a man who distinguishes between the office and the
person is more intelligent than the man who does not. The man who
distinguishes between the functions of an office in exercise and in
quiescence is more intelligent than the one who does not. The man
who distinguishes between the two meanings of a word often used in
two senses is more intelligent than the man who does not.
For example, in the question of office: The man who
less
intelligent than the man who does not, while a man who distinguishes
between infallibility exercised upon a positive affirmation and infallibility
exercised in advising discretion is more intelligent than a man who
cannot so distinguish. When infallible authority bids us not to be
certain on an uncertainty, it is using its function in one way. When
it affirms a specific certitude it is using its function in another.
A man who distinguishes between the two is more intelligent than one
who does not so distinguish. Thus an authority denying the present
certitude of man's terrestrial origin and who says,
"We are not fixed upon the way in which man came to be what he
certainly is--quite distinct from other animals," is saying
one thing. The same authority affirming the certitude of original
sin is saying something quite different.
It is right in each case, but right in a different particular.
In the first statement there is not positive pronouncement on the
origin of man, but only a pronouncement that, at present, this origin
is not known. In the second statement there is a positive pronouncement
that man suffers from a special taint incurred at the (undefined)
origin of his kind. The man who sees the distinction is more intelligent
than a man who mixes up the two pronouncements.
Again, in the matter of the ambiguity of words: A man
who thinks that, because the Church needed "reformation"
in the early sixteenth century, therefore the disruptive movement
also known as the "Reformation" was necessary and good is
less intelligent than a man who does not confuse these totally distinct
terms, though they happen to be expressed by the same set of syllables.
One test of intelligence being, then, the power to separate
distinct categories, the corresponding test of stupidity is inability
to do so, and I say that stupid skepticism, like stupid anything else,
is the despair of the intelligent believer who tries to deal with
it.
He may approach it with rhetoric, or with appeals to what
is the fashion, or in any other irrational way. He may even approach
it with bribes. He may approach it with that very modern weapon, perpetual
reiteration, after the fashion of the "slogan" upon which
the masters of salesmanship depend. But all these methods are so basely
unworthy of high controversy on the ultimate truths that I would rather
not contemplate them.
The approach to intelligent skepticism is quite other.
It is this: to make clear to the opposing mind what is the nature
of that conviction which has settled our own minds. In this, as it
seems to me, there are three successive stages to be undertaken at
the outset.
The first of these stages is to make clear what the
Catholic system is. Until the elements of the unknown
thing are presented, the two opposing minds are living on different
planes and are reasoning from different premises. It is not only so
in this supreme matter of Catholic truth, but in any number of lesser
matters. Thus, if you would persuade a man that the humanities are
of value in education, you must begin by giving him some idea of what
the humanities are. Often such a one will think that the humanities
are only a dull acquisition of languages no longer in use. If the
humanities were indeed no more than that it would be most rational
to oppose such a waste of time as the acquirement of classical scholarship.
Since the objector cannot see of what value the humanities are, he
must be shown by example how those who have passed through their curriculum
have thereby been increased in the power of thought and of feeling,
have come to the roots of our civilization, have enjoyed the highest
masterpieces and have come into touch with the greatest beauty and
the most profound thought; he must be shown how their experience has
explained to them the European world in which they live and perhaps
may help them to save civilization, even though it has declined into
its present condition.
So it is with the much greater business of the faith.
You must introduce the Person. For you must remember that in the first
place the intelligent skeptic whom we approach does not, as a rule,
know the full body of Catholic doctrines; in the second place, he
usually regards those which he does know (even if he is familiar with
a great number) as disconnected statements not belonging to one being,
not forming a unity, not a living system spreading from a single root
and inspired by a single essence, but a bundle of dead sticks.
The skeptic whom you approach must first appreciate
that the thing he is asked to examine is what it is, an organism endowed
with a life, having a character and savor of its own: a personality
and, above all, a personality undoubtedly and wholly one. Next he
must be shown that its judgments fit exactly to the whole range of
man's being, which it at once explains, enlarges, and rectifies. He
must be presented with the faith as that which demonstrably enlarges,
which (in the judgment of those who hold it) undoubtedly explains,
human life, which gives that life its rationale and morally and aesthetically
rectifies--that is, sanely guides and maintains in health--the
same.
Not till all this has been done can you proceed to the
second stage of instruction, which I take to be this: the postulating
of mystery. In becoming acquainted with the faith as the most reasonably
human of things, he must also come across its mysteries--which
at first he cannot accept. Your instruction must approach these and
show what place they hold, what character they have--as, for instance,
the mystery of the Incarnation.
I use "instruction" in the sense not of didactic
and enforced exercises, but of the getting a man in touch with some
real thing; thus, a man is instructed in seafaring by going to sea,
though no formal teaching be given him, is instructed in good verse
by hearing much good verse, though he be told no rules of prosody.
The faith, I say, will be found to contain, or rather
to be inextricably bound up with, mysteries. There is that supreme
foundational mystery of which I have spoken, from which all flows--the
doctrine of the Incarnation. Apart from the mysteries of positive
intellectual doctrine, such as the mystery of the Trinity, the mystery
of survival, and the rest, there are moral mysteries, nearly all of
them connected with that awful double question of will and doom, freedom
and fate. There are mysteries of definition, or, again, the mystery
of the visible Church where certain superhuman powers designed for
superhuman ends of holiness are necessarily exercised by human agency,
often base.
Now, just as it is a test of intelligence to be able
to separate categories, so it is a test of intelligence to accept
mystery. It is no test of intelligence to accept a particular
mystery. Any number of statements could be put forth as mysteries,
and all of them be false; as, for instance, the very old Puritan mystery,
that there are two principles in God--the one good, the other
evil--or the highly modern mystery that evil is an illusion.
No, it is certainly not a test of intelligence to accept
a particular mystery, but it is a test of intelligence to
admit that mystery must form an inevitable part in any statement of
reality. For to do so is but to acknowledge that man is limited in
diverse ways and that while with one power of his mind he may see
a truth, with another power another, and be certain of both, yet he
may not have the further ability to reconcile the two certitudes.
A man who laughs at mystery merely because it is mystery,
that is, a man who ridicules the idea that there are things beyond,
but not contradictory to, our reason, may be put at once in that other
category of the stupid skeptic, at whom we laugh or weep according
to our mood. But the presentation of particular mysteries to the opposing
skeptical mind is not the same thing as the proposing of mystery in
general. The intelligent skeptic must grant you at once the existence
of mystery, for he will not have passed his life without thinking,
and he must have discovered that he is surrounded by mystery and is
himself a mystery.
For instance, he does not exist in time immediately
past nor in time immediately to come, yet he only is
because he takes part in all three. Without extension in time a creature
of time cannot be, yet what extension in time can be applied to a
creature who only lives in a moment infinitesimal and therefore in
itself not extended? Or, again, what is memory? Or again, the self-defined
trinity of space, time, and motion must be in one aspect static, in
another aspect it is known not to be so. Or again, the mystery of
personality--what is the principle of continuity therein? Is it
sane to deny the oneness of personality? No. Is it sane to deny that
personality is successive, perpetually disappearing into the past?
No. Then what is it? And so through an indefinitely long list--all
the vistas upon which the mind dwells, reaching no horizon.
The intelligent skeptic can be familiarized with the
idea of mystery until it becomes a habit of his mind and takes its
part, as it should, in his scheme of reality. Indeed, this second
step in the approach is one certain to be reached and passed when
the intelligence is sufficiently lively.
But the third step is the decisive one, and upon that
all turns. Granted that the faith is such and such, a personality
with a voice and a character, an authority whose commands and explanations
can be discovered by sufficient trial to be consonant with experience--granted
that the faith's admission of mysteries is no bar to its credibility,
then mystery can be accepted if the Church substantiates its claim
to authority. Yet how shall it substantiate that claim? What proof
can we bring that if there be divine authority on earth it is hers?
Here we must approach the skeptic's last position by
the presentation of that truth which our age has forgotten more than
any previous age ever did--the rare knowledge that proof is of
various kinds. Proof is not of one sort only; it is multiple in character.
The very word "proof" takes on a different savor according
to the matter towards which it is directed.
Reality is reached not in one way only, as by deduction,
or by measurement, or by observation, or by the elimination of possible
alternatives, but in any one of each of these ways, or by two or more
combined, or by any one of an indefinite number of other ways, each
specially applicable to the indefinite number of problems presented.
Would you prove to a man that two sides of a triangle
are longer than the third, you may go through the deductive mathematical
proof; but if you would prove to him that Jones has not committed
a particular murder, you must enter into the field of known human
motives and of known human capacities; man being known not to have
the power of bilocation, you may establish an alibi, or you may prove
the absence of motive. Would you prove that Swift is a better writer
than Kipling, you cannot establish certainty in the same degree, but,
in your efforts to convince anyone who doubted such a proposition,
your methods would probably be to make him familiar with numerous
parallel examples taken from these two masters. Would you prove that
the music of Mozart more charms the ear than the siren of a steamboat,
you would appeal to repeated experience of the two sounds; in morals
you would appeal to the moral sense, in beauty to the aesthetic, as
in physical science to measurement, coupled with the postulate that
things happening repeatedly in the same fashion presumably follow
a process normally invariable. In every case your proof must vary
with the nature of the thesis to be proved.
Now, I have said that the chief difficulty before us
today, in presenting the proof of the faith, is that appeals to mathematical
science or to experimental physical science are almost the only kinds
to which men are now directed by their education. Lack of
use has atrophied what should be the common powers of mankind in other
fields, powers taken for granted in a better past.
Those powers, in presenting the faith to the intelligent
skeptic, we must seek to revive, for the intellectual basis of the
faith is not that of positive proof, using the word "positive"
in the scientific or mathematical sense, but an appeal to proof within
one category: that applicable to holiness. If there be holiness on
earth, what institution is holy? One only: the faith. The faith is
witness to itself. It is a proof by taste. If the quality be perceived,
it is unmistakable; conviction follows. If it be not perceived, there
is no other avenue, for the sense is of grace, the acceptation an
act of the will.
The faith, I say, is witness to itself. The faith convinces
of its truth by its holiness, is its own witness to its own holiness,
whereby also it is known. There is much more: There is its consonance
with external and historical reality upon every side; there is personal
experience, gained by living it, of its consonance with reality in
daily detail, of its wisdom in judgment, of its harmonies where human
character and the effect of action are concerned, of its perfect proportions,
which are such that all within that system is in tune with all and
each part with the whole.
And there is further this: that the faith is unique;
it is not one among many kinds of similar things. It is not a religion
among many religions. It is like the I AM of Holy Writ, from
which it also proceeds.
All that. All that. I do not say that you will thus
convince, but I say it is by this progression that the intelligent
skeptic, our only worthy opponent, can at last be brought into the
household. First to know where the House is: then to be shown that
the gates are open. Then to find himself in the House. And what other
roof is there in this world?
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), the great friend and mentor
of G.K. Chesterton, was a journalist, debater, essayist, and historian.
He wrote more than one hundred books, some of which have never gone
out of print, others of which are being brought back into print. This
article is taken from Essays of a Catholic 1931), which is
available through this issue's catalogue. Additional titles by Belloc
will be available in future catalogues.
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