The Right to Believe

 

To L. T. Hobhouse.

CHOCORUA, Aug. 12, 1904.

Dear Brother Hobhouse,—Don't you think it a tant soit peu scurvy trick to play on me ('tis true that you don't name me, but to the informed reader the reference is transparent—I say nothing of poor Schiller's case) to print in the "Aristotelian Proceedings" (pages 104 ff.)[54] a beautiful duplicate of my own theses in the "Will to Believe" essay (which should have been called by the less unlucky title the Right to Believe) in the guise of an alternative and substitute for my doctrine, for which latter you, in the earlier pages of your charmingly written essay, substitute a travesty for which I defy any candid reader to find a single justification in my text? My essay hedged the license to indulge in private over-beliefs with so many restrictions and signboards of danger that the outlet was narrow enough. It made of tolerance the essence of the situation; it defined the permissible cases; it treated the faith-attitude as a necessity for individuals, because the total "evidence," which only the race can draw, has to include their experiments among its data. It tended to show only that faith could not be absolutely vetoed, as certain champions of "science" (Clifford, Huxley, etc.) had claimed it ought to be. It was a function that might lead, and probably does lead, into a wider world. You say identically the same things; only, from your special polemic point of view, you emphasize more the dangers; while I, from my polemic point of view, emphasized more the right to run their risk... Letters II