Criticism on Contemporary Thought and Thinkers (Volume 1) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1894 Excerpt: ... XV MR. LESLIE STEPHEN AND THE SCEPTICISM OF BELIEVERS 1877 Mr. Leslie Stephen is a powerful writer, but he would be more, not less powerful, if there were less of the sneering tone in his writings, and more anxiety to do justice to the views of his opponents. The first position Mr. Stephen takes up in his paper on "the Scepticism of Believers" in the September Fortnightly is not only true, but so obviously true, that he need hardly have laboured it as he has done. It is, that just as the sceptic is a doubter as to the religious creeds which he rejects, so the believer is a doubter of the sceptical creeds which he in his turn rejects, --that there is as much scepticism of the adequacy of the sceptic's creed in the religious believer, as there is scepticism of the adequacy of the Christian's creed in the sceptic. That is perfectly true, and hardly needed stating. The man who believes in miracle is a sceptic as to the absolute uniformity of physical order. The man who believes in revelation is a sceptic as to the mere humanity of the conscience and of the spiritual affections of man. The man who believes in immortality is a sceptic as to the extinction of the person with the dissolution of the visible body. All this is self-evident. And it is self-evident, too, that Mr. Stephen is right in assuming that if scepticism is to be saddled with a reproachful meaning at all, the greatest scepticism should be defined as the scepticism which resists the greatest weight of evidence, so that a believer who believes something arbitrarily and against all sound reason is, in this sense, as true a sceptic as any one who rejects something arbitrarily and against all sound reason. So far I go entirely with Mr. Leslie Stephen, and only wonder that he should have taken so much pa...