The Ethics of Belief (1877)

William K. Clifford

Originally published in Contemporary Review, 1877. Reprinted in Lectures and Essays (1879). Presently in print in The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays (Prometheus Books, 1999).

Sections:

I. THE DUTY OF INQUIRY  -  Notes III. THE WEIGHT OF AUTHORITY -  Notes IIIII. THE LIMITS OF INFERENCE -  Notes III

Notes by Maarten Maartensz.

 

I. THE DUTY OF INQUIRY

A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and and refitted, even though this should put him at great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In

such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales. (Note 1)

What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts. And although in the end he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it. (Note 2)  

Let us alter the case a little, and suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely, and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner? Not one jot. When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. (Note 3) The man would not have been innocent, he would only have been not found out. The question of right or wrong has to do with the origin of his belief, not the matter of it; not what it was, but how he got it; not whether it turned out to be true or false, but whether he had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him. (Note 4)

There was once an island in which some of the inhabitants professed a religion teaching neither the doctrine of original sin nor that of eternal punishment. (Note 5) A suspicion got abroad that the professors of this religion had made use of unfair means to get their doctrines taught to children. They were accused of wresting the laws of their country in such a way as to remove children from the care of their natural and legal guardians; and even of stealing them away and keeping them concealed from their friends and relations. A certain number of men formed themselves into a society for the purpose of agitating the public about this matter. They published grave accusations against against individual citizens of the highest position and character, and did all in their power to injure these citizens in their exercise of their professions. So great was the noise they made, that a Commission was appointed to investigate the facts; but after the Commission had carefully inquired into all the evidence that could be got, it appeared that the accused were innocent. Not only had they been accused of insufficient evidence, but the evidence of their innocence was such as the agitators might easily have obtained, if they had attempted a fair inquiry. After these disclosures the inhabitants of that country looked upon the members of the agitating society, not only as persons whose judgment was to be distrusted, but also as no longer to be counted honourable men. For although they had sincerely and conscientiously believed in the charges they had made, yet they had no right to believe on such evidence as was before them. Their sincere convictions, instead of being honestly earned by patient inquiring, were stolen by listening to the voice of prejudice and passion. (Note 6)

Let us vary this case also, and suppose, other things remaining as before, that a still more accurate investigation proved the accused to have been really guilty. Would this make any difference in the guilt of the accusers? Clearly not; the question is not whether their belief was true or false, but whether they entertained it on wrong grounds. (Note 7) They would no doubt say, "Now you see that we were right after all; next time perhaps you will believe us." And they might be believed, but they would not thereby become honourable men. They would not be innocent, they would only be not found out. (Note 8) Every one of them, if he chose to examine himself in foro conscientiae, would know that he had acquired and nourished a belief, when he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him; and therein he would know that he had done a wrong thing. (Note 9)

It may be said, however, that in both these supposed cases it is not the belief which is judged to be wrong, but the action following upon it. (Note 10) The shipowner might say, "I am perfectly certain that my ship is sound, but still I feel it my duty to have her examined, before trusting the lives of so many people to her." And it might be said to the agitator, "However convinced you were of the justice of your cause and the truth of your convictions, you ought not to have made a public attack upon any man's character until you had examined the evidence on both sides with the utmost patience and care."

In the first place, let us admit that, so far as it goes, this view of the case is right and necessary; right, because even when a man's belief is so fixed that he cannot think otherwise, he still has a choice in the action suggested by it, and so cannot escape the duty of investigating on the ground of the strength of his convictions; and necessary, because those who are not yet capable of controlling their feelings and thoughts must have a plain rule dealing with overt acts. (Note 11)

But this being premised as necessary, it becomes clear that it is not sufficient, and that our previous judgment is required to supplement it. For it is not possible so to sever the belief from the action it suggests as to condemn the one without condemning the other. No man holding a strong belief on one side of a question, or even wishing to hold a belief on one side, can investigate it with such fairness and completeness as if he were really in doubt and unbiased; so that the existence of a belief not founded on fair inquiry unfits a man for the performance of this necessary duty. (Note 12)

Nor is it that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it. (Note 13) He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart. If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole. (Note 14) No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms

those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character for ever. (Note 15)

And no one man's belief is in any case a private matter which concerns himself alone. Our lives our guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes. Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought, are common property, fashioned and perfected from age to age; an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as a precious deposit and a sacred trust to be handled on to the next one, not unchanged but enlarged and purified, with some clear marks of its proper handiwork. (Note 16) Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live. (Note 17)  

In the two supposed cases which have been considered, it has been judged wrong to believe on insufficient evidence, or to nourish belief by suppressing doubts and avoiding investigation. The reason of this judgment is not far to seek: it is that in both these cases the belief held by one man was of great importance to other men. But forasmuch as no belief held by one man, however seemingly trivial the belief, and however obscure the believer, is ever actually insignificant or without its effect on the fate of mankind, we have no choice but to extend our judgment to all cases of belief whatever. (Note 18) Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves but for humanity. (Note 19) It is rightly used on truths which have been established by long experience and waiting toil, and which have stood in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning. Then it helps to bind men together, and to strengthen and direct their common action. It is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements, for the solace and private pleasure of the believer; to add a tinsel splendour to the plain straight road of our life and display a bright mirage beyond it; or even to drown the common sorrows of our kind by a self-deception which allows them not only to cast down, but also to degrade us. Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his beliefs with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away. (Note 20)

It is not only the leader of men, statesmen, philosopher, or poet, that owes this bounden duty to mankind. Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race. Every hard-worked wife of an artisan may transmit to her children beliefs which shall knit society together, or rend it in pieces. No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe. (Note 21)

It is true that this duty is a hard one, and the doubt which comes out of it

is often a very bitter thing. It leaves us bare and powerless where we thought that we were safe and strong. To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances. (Note 22) We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, then when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn. And if we have supposed ourselves to know all about anything, and to be capable of doing what is fit in regard to it, we naturally do not like to find that we are really ignorant and powerless, that we have to begin again at the beginning, and try to learn what the thing is and how it is to be dealt with--if indeed anything can be learnt about it. It is the sense of power attached to a sense of knowledge that makes men desirous of believing, and afraid of doubting.

This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation. For then we may justly feel that it is common property, and hold good for others as well as for ourselves. Then we may be glad, not that I have learned secrets by which I am safer and stronger, but that we men have got mastery over more of the world; and we shall be strong, not for ourselves but in the name of Man and his strength. But if the belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence, the pleasure is a stolen one. Not only does it deceive ourselves by giving us a sense of power which we do not really possess, but it is sinful, because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. (Note 23) That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from pestilence, which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town. What would be thought of one who, for the sake of a sweet fruit, should deliberately run the risk of delivering a plague upon his family and his neighbours? (Note 24)

And, as in other such cases, it is not the risk only which has to be considered; for a bad action is always bad at the time when it is done, no matter what happens afterwards. Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing evidence.(Note 25)  We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great and wide. But a greater and wider evil arises when the credulous character is maintained and supported, when a habit of believing for unworthy reasons is fostered and made permanent. (Note 26) If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done from the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest. What hurts society is not that it should lose its property, but that it should become a den of thieves, for then it must cease to be society. This is why we ought not to do evil, that good may come; for at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil and are made wicked thereby. (Note 27) In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must

sink back into savagery. (Note 28)

The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs. Habitual want of care about what I believe leads to habitual want of care in others about the truth of what is told to me. Men speak the truth of one another when each reveres the truth in his own mind and in the other's mind; but how shall my friend revere the truth in my mind when I myself am careless about it, when I believe thing because I want to believe them, and because they are comforting and pleasant? (Note 29) Will he not learn to cry, "Peace," to me, when there is no peace? By such a course I shall surround myself with a thick atmosphere of falsehood and fraud, and in that I must live. It may matter little to me, in my cloud-castle of sweet illusions and darling lies; but it matters much to Man that I have made my neighbours ready to deceive. (Note 30) The credulous man is father to the liar and the cheat; he lives in the bosom of this his family, and it is no marvel if he should become even as they are. (Note 31) So closely are our duties knit together, that whoso shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. (Note 32)

If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it--the life of that man is one long sin against mankind. (Note 33)

If this judgment seems harsh when applied to those simple souls who have never known better, who have been brought up from the cradle with a horror of doubt, and taught that their eternal welfare depends on what they believe, then it leads to the very serious question, Who hath made Israel to sin?

It may be permitted me to fortify this judgment with the sentence of Milton--

A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determine, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy. [1] (Note 34)

And with this famous aphorism of Coleridge--

He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and end loving himself better than all. [2] (Note 35)

Inquiry into the evidence of a doctrine is not to be made once for all, and then taken as finally settled. It is never lawful to stifle a doubt; for either it

can be honestly answered by means of the inquiry already made, or else it proves that the inquiry was not complete. (Note 36)

"But," says one, "I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments."

Then he should have no time to believe. (Note 37)

 

 

II. THE WEIGHT OF AUTHORITY

Are we then to become universal sceptics, doubting everything, afraid always to put one foot before the other until we have personally tested the firmness of the road? Are we to deprive ourselves of the help and guidance of that vast body of knowledge which is daily growing upon the world, because neither we nor any other one person can possibly test a hundredth part of it by immediate experiment or observation, and because it would not be completely proved if we did? Shall we steal and tell lies because we have had no personal experience wide enough to justify the belief that it is wrong to do so? (Note 38)

There is no practical danger that such consequences will ever follow from scrupulous care and self-control in the matter of belief. Those men who have most nearly done their duty in this respect have found that certain great principles, and these most fitted for the guidance of life, have stood out more and more clearly in proportion to the care and honesty with which they were tested, and have acquired in this way a practical certainty. The beliefs about right and wrong which guide our actions in dealing with men in society, and the beliefs about physical nature which guide our actions in dealing with animate and inanimate bodies, these never suffer from investigation; they can take care of themselves, without being propped up by "acts of faith," the clamour of paid advocates, or the suppression of contrary evidence. (Note 39) Moreover there are many cases in which it is our duty to act upon probabilities, although the evidence is not such as to justify present belief; because it is precisely by such action, and by observation of its fruits, that evidence is got which may justify future belief. So that we have no reason to fear lest a habit of conscientious inquiry should paralyse the actions of our daily life. (Note 40)

But because it is not enough to say, "It is wrong to believe on unworthy evidence," without saying also what evidence is worthy, we shall now go on to inquire under what circumstances it is lawful to believe on the testimony of others; and then, further, we shall inquire more generally when and why we may believe that which goes beyond our own

experience, or even beyond the experience of mankind. (Note 41)

In what cases, then, let us ask in the first place, is the testimony of a man unworthy of belief? He may say that which is untrue either knowingly or unknowingly. In the first case he is lying, and his moral character is to blame; in the second case he is ignorant or mistaken, and it is only his knowledge or his judgment which is in fault. (Note 42) In order that we may have the right to accept his testimony as ground for believing what he says, we must have reasonable grounds for trusting his veracity, that he is really trying to speak the truth so far as he knows it; his knowledge, that he has had opportunities of knowing the truth about this matter; and his judgment, that he has made proper use of those opportunities in coming to the conclusion which he affirms. (Note 43)

However plain and obvious these reasons may be, so that no man of ordinary intelligence, reflecting upon the matter, could fail to arrive at them, it is nevertheless true that a great many persons do habitually disregard them in weighing testimony. (Note 44) Of the two questions, equally important to the trustworthiness of a witness, "Is he dishonest?" and "May he be mistaken?" the majority of mankind are perfectly satisfied if one can, with some show of probability, be answered in the negative. The excellent moral character of a man is alleged as ground for accepting his statements about things which he cannot possibly have known. A Mohammedan, for example, will tell us that the character of his Prophet was so noble and majestic that it commands the reverence even of those who do not believe in his mission. So admirable was his moral teaching, so wisely put together the great social machine which he created, that his precepts have not only been accepted by a great portion of mankind, but have actually been obeyed. His institutions have on the one hand rescued the negro from savagery, and on the other hand have taught civilization to the advancing West; and although the races which held the highest forms of his faith, and most fully embodied his mind and thought, have all been conquered and swept away by barbaric tribes, yet the history of their marvellous attainments remains as an imperishable glory to Islam. Are we to doubt the word of a man so great and so good? Can we suppose that this magnificent genius, this splendid moral hero, has lied to us about the most solemn and sacred matters? The testimony of Mohammed is clear, that there is but one God, and that he, Mohammed, is his Prophet; that if we believe in him we shall enjoy everlasting felicity, but that if we do not we shall be damned. This testimony rests on the most awful of foundations, the revelation of heaven itself; for was he not visited by the angel Gabriel, as he fasted and prayed in his desert cave, and allowed to enter into the blessed fields of Paradise? Surely God is God and Mohammed is the Prophet of God.

What should we answer to this Mussulman? First, no doubt, we should be tempted to take exception against his view of the character of the Prophet and the uniformly beneficial influence of Islam: before we could go with him altogether in these matters it might seem that we should have to forget many terrible things of which we have heard or read. But if we chose to grant him all these assumptions, for the sake of argument, and because it is difficult both for the faithful and for infidels to discuss them fairly and without passion, still we should have something to say

which takes away the ground of his belief, and therefore shows that it is wrong to entertain it. Namely this: the character of Mohammed is excellent evidence that he was honest and spoke the truth so far as he knew it; but it is no evidence at all that he knew what the truth was. (Note 45) What means could he have of knowing that the form which appeared to him to be the angel Gabriel was not a hallucination, and that his apparent visit to Paradise was not a dream? Grant that he himself was fully persuaded and honestly believed that he had the guidance of heaven, and was the vehicle of a supernatural revelation, how could he know that this strong conviction was not a mistake? (Note 46) Let us put ourselves in his place; we shall find that the more completely we endeavour to realise what passed through his mind, the more clearly we shall perceive that the Prophet could have had no adequate ground for the belief in his own inspiration. It is most probable that he himself never doubted of the matter, or thought of asking the question; but we are in the position of those to whom the question has been asked, and who are bound to answer it. It is known to medical observers that solitude and want of food are powerful means of producing delusion and of fostering a tendency to mental disease. Let us suppose, then, that I, like Mohammed, go into desert places to fast and pray; what things can happen to me which will give me the right to believe that I am divinely inspired? Suppose that I get information, apparently from a celestial visitor, which upon being tested is found to be correct. I cannot be sure, in the first place, that the celestial visitor is not a figment of my own mind, and that the information did not come to me, unknown at the time to my consciousness, through some subtle channel of sense. But if my visitor were a real visitor, and for a long time gave me information which was found to be trustworthy, this would indeed be good ground for trusting him in the future as to such matters as fall within human powers of verification; but it would not be ground for trusting his testimony as to any other matters. (Note 47) For although his tested character would justify me in believing that he spoke the truth so far as he knew, yet the same question would present itself—what ground is there for supposing that he knows? (Note 48)

Even if my supposed visitor had given me such information, subsequently verified by me, as proved him to have means of knowledge about verifiable matters far exceeding my own; this would not justify me in believing what he said about matters that are not at present capable of verification by man. It would be ground for interesting conjecture, and for the hope that, as the fruit of our patient inquiry, we might by and by attain to such a means of verification as should rightly turn conjecture into belief. For belief belongs to man, and to the guidance of human affairs: no belief is real unless it guide our actions, and those very actions supply a test of its truth. (Note 49)

But, it may be replied, the acceptance of Islam as a system is just that action which is prompted by belief in the mission of the Prophet, and which will serve for a test of its truth. Is it possible to believe that a system which has succeeded so well is really founded upon a delusion? Not only have individual saints found joy and peace in believing, and verified those spiritual experiences which are promised to the faithful, but nations also have been raised from savagery or barbarism to a higher social state. Surely we are at liberty to say that the belief has been acted

upon, and that it has been verified.

It requires, however, but little consideration to show that what has really been verified is not at all the supernal character of the Prophet’s mission, or the trustworthiness of his authority in matters which we ourselves cannot test, but only his practical wisdom in certain very mundane things. (Note 50) The fact that believers have found joy and peace in believing gives us the right to say that the doctrine is a comfortable doctrine, and pleasant to the soul; but it does not give us the right to say that it is true. And the question which our conscience is always asking about that which we are tempted to believe is not, "Is it comfortable and pleasant?" but, "Is it true?" (Note 51) That the Prophet preached certain doctrines, and predicted that spiritual comfort would be found in them, proves only his sympathy with human nature and his knowledge of it; but it does not prove his superhuman knowledge of theology.

And if we admit for the sake of argument (for it seems that we cannot do more) that the progress made by Moslem nations in certain cases was really due to the system formed and sent forth into the world by Mohammed, we are not at liberty to conclude from this that he was inspired to declare the truth about things which we cannot verify. We are only at liberty to infer the excellence of his moral precepts, or of the means which he devised for so working upon men as to get them obeyed, or of the social and political machinery which he set up. And it would require a great amount of careful examination into the history of those nations to determine which of these things had the greater share in the result. So that here again it is the Prophet’s knowledge of human nature, and his sympathy with it, that are verified; not his divine inspiration or his knowledge of theology.

If there were only one Prophet, indeed, it might well seem a difficult and even an ungracious task to decide upon what points we would trust him, and on what we would doubt his authority; seeing what help and furtherance all men have gained in all ages from those who saw more clearly, who felt more strongly, and who sought the truth with more single heart than their weaker brethren. But there is not only one Prophet; and while the consent of many upon that which, as men, they had real means of knowing and did know, has endured to the end, and been honourably built into the great fabric of human knowledge, the diverse witness of some about that which they did not and could not know remains as a warning to us that to exaggerate the prophetic authority is to misuse it, and to dishonor those who have sought only to help and further us after their power. It is hardly in human nature that a man should quite accurately gauge the limits of his own insight; but it is the duty of those who profit by his work to consider carefully where he may have been carried beyond it. (Note 52) If we must needs embalm his possible errors along with his solid achievements, and use his authority as an excuse for believing what he cannot have known, we make of his goodness an occasion to sin.

To consider only one other such witness: the followers of the Buddha have at least as much right to appeal to individual and social experience in support of the authority of the Eastern saviour. The special mark of his

religion, it is said, that in which it has never been surpassed, is the comfort and consolation which it gives to the sick and sorrowful, the tender sympathy with which it soothes and assuages all the natural griefs of men. And surely no triumph of social morality can be greater or nobler than that which has kept nearly half the human race from persecuting in the name of religion. If we are to trust the accounts of his early followers, he believed himself to have come upon earth with a divine and cosmic mission to set rolling the wheel of the law. Being a prince, he divested himself of his kingdom, and of his free will became acquainted with misery, that he might learn how to meet and subdue it. Could such a man speak falsely about solemn things? And as for his knowledge, was he not a man miraculous with powers more than man’s? He was born of woman without the help of man; he rose into the air and was transfigured before his kinsmen; at last he went up bodily into heaven from the top of Adam’s Peak. Is not his word to be believed in when he testifies of heavenly things?

If there were only he, and no other, with such claims! But there is Mohammed with his testimony; we cannot choose but listen to them both. The Prophet tells us that there is one God, and that we shall live for ever in joy or misery, according as we believe in the Prophet or not. The Buddha says that there is no God, and that we shall be annihilated by and by if we are good enough. Both cannot be infallibly inspired; one or other must have been the victim of a delusion, and thought he knew that which he really did not know. Who shall dare to say which? and how can we justify ourselves in believing that the other was not also deluded? (Note 53)

We are led, then, to these judgments following. The goodness and greatness of a man do not justify us in accepting a belief upon the warrant of his authority, unless there are reasonable grounds for supposing that he knew the truth of what he was saying. (Note 54) And there can be no grounds for supposing that a man knows that which we, without ceasing to be men, could not be supposed to verify. (Note 55)

If a chemist tells me, who am no chemist, that a certain substance can be made by putting together other substances in certain proportions and subjecting them to a known process, I am quite justified in believing this upon his authority, unless I know anything against his character or his judgment. For his professional training is one which tends to encourage veracity and the honest pursuit of truth, and to produce a dislike of hasty conclusions and slovenly investigation. And I have reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the truth of what he is saying, for although I am no chemist, I can be made to understand so much of the methods and processes of the science as makes it conceivable to me that, without ceasing to be man, I might verify the statement. (Note 56) I may never actually verify it, or even see any experiment which goes towards verifying it; but still I have quite reason enough to justify me in believing that the verification is within the reach of human appliances and powers, and in particular that it has been actually performed by my informant. His result, the belief to which he has been led by his inquiries, is valid not only for himself but for others; it is watched and tested by those who are working in the same ground, and who know that no greater service can be

rendered to science than the purification of accepted results from the errors which may have crept into them. It is in this way that the result becomes common property, a right object of belief, which is a social affair and matter of public business. (Note 57)  Thus it is to be observed that his authority is valid because there are those who question it and verify it; that it is precisely this process of examining and purifying that keeps alive among investigators the love of that which shall stand all possible tests, the sense of public responsibility as of those whose work, if well done, shall remain as the enduring heritage of mankind. (Note 58)

But if my chemist tells me that an atom of oxygen has existed unaltered in weight and rate of vibration throughout all time I have no right to believe this on his authority, for it is a thing which he cannot know without ceasing to be man. (Note 59) He may quite honestly believe that this statement is a fair inference from his experiments, but in that case his judgment is at fault. A very simple consideration of the character of experiments would show him that they never can lead to results of such a kind; that being themselves only approximate and limited, they cannot give us knowledge which is exact and universal. No eminence of character and genius can give a man authority enough to justify us in believing him when he makes statements implying exact or universal knowledge.

Again, an Arctic explorer may tell us that in a given latitude and longitude he has experienced such and such a degree of cold, that the sea was of such a depth, and the ice of such a character. We should be quite right to believe him, in the absence of any stain upon his veracity. It is conceivable that we might, without ceasing to be men, go there and verify his statement; it can be tested by the witness of his companions, and there is adequate ground for supposing that he knows the truth of what he is saying. But if an old whaler tells us that the ice is 300 feet thick all the way up to the Pole, we shall not be justified in believing him. For although the statement may be capable of verification by man, it is certainly not capable of verification by him, with any means and appliances which he has possessed; and he must have persuaded himself of the truth of it by some means which does not attach any credit to his testimony. Even if, therefore, the matter affirmed is within the reach of human knowledge, we have no right to accept it upon authority unless it is within the reach of our informant’s knowledge. (Note 60)

What shall we say of that authority, more venerable and august than any individual witness, the time-honoured tradition of the human race? An atmosphere of beliefs and conceptions has been formed by the labours and struggles of our forefathers, which enables us to breathe amid the various and complex circumstances of our life. It is around and about us and within us; we cannot think except in the forms and processes of thought which it supplies. Is it possible to doubt and to test it? and if possible, is it right? (Note 61)

We shall find reason to answer that it is not only possible and right, but our bounden duty; that the main purpose of the tradition itself is to supply us with the means of asking questions, of testing and inquiring into things; that if we misuse it, and take it as a collection of cut-and-dried

statements to be accepted without further inquiry, we are not only injuring ourselves here, but, by refusing to do our part towards the building up of the fabric which shall be inherited by our children, we are tending to cut off ourselves and our race from the human line. (Note 62)

Let us first take care to distinguish a kind of tradition which especially requires to be examined and called in question, because it especially shrinks from inquiry. Suppose that a medicine-man in Central Africa tells his tribe that a certain powerful medicine in his tent will be propitiated if they kill their cattle, and that the tribe believe him. Whether the medicine was propitiated or not there are no means of verifying, but the cattle are gone. Still the belief may be kept up in the tribe that propitiation has been effected in this way; and in a later generation it will be all the easier for another medicine-man to persuade them to a similar act. Here the only reason for belief is that everybody has believed the thing for so long that it must be true. And yet the belief was founded on fraud, and has been propagated by credulity. (Note 63) That man will undoubtedly do right, and be a friend of men, who shall call it in question and see that there is no evidence for it, help his neighbours to see as he does, and even, if need be, go into the holy tent and break the medicine. (Note 64)

The rule which should guide us in such cases is simple and obvious enough: that the aggregate testimony of our neighbours is subject to the same conditions as the testimony of any one of them. Namely, we have no right to believe a thing true because everybody says so unless there are good grounds for believing that some one person at least has the means of knowing what is true, and is speaking the truth so far as he knows it. (Note 65) However many nations and generations of men are brought into the witness-box they cannot testify to anything which they do not know. Every man who has accepted the statement from somebody else, without himself testing and verifying it, is out of court; his word is worth nothing at all. (Note 66) And when we get back at last to the true birth and beginning of the statement, two serious questions must be disposed of in regard to him who first made it: was he mistaken in thinking that he knew about this matter, or was he lying? (Note 67)

This last question is unfortunately a very actual and practical one even to us at this day and in this country. We have no occasion to go to La Salette, or to Central Africa, or to Lourdes, for examples of immoral and debasing superstition. It is only too possible for a child to grow up in London surrounded by an atmosphere of beliefs fit only for the savage, which have in our own time been founded in fraud and propagated by credulity. (Note 68)

Laying aside, then, such tradition as is handed on without testing by successive generations, let us consider that which is truly built up out of the common experience of mankind. This great fabric is for the guidance of our thoughts, and through them of our actions, both in the moral and in the material world. In the moral world, for example, it gives us the conceptions of right in general, of justice, of truth, of beneficence, and the like. These are given as conceptions, not as statements or propositions; they answer to certain definite instincts which are certainly within us, however they came there. (Note 69) That it is right to be beneficent is

matter of immediate personal experience; for when a man retires within himself and there finds something, wider and more lasting than his solitary personality, which says, "I want to do right," as well as, "I want to do good to man," he can verify by direct observation that one instinct is founded upon and agrees fully with the other. And it is his duty so to verify this and all similar statements. (Note 70)

The tradition says also, at a definite place and time, that such and such actions are just, or true, or beneficent. For all such rules a further inquiry is necessary, since they are sometimes established by an authority other than that of the moral sense founded on experience. (Note 71) Until recently, the moral tradition of our own country—and indeed of all Europe—taught that it was beneficent to give money indiscriminately to beggars. (Note 72) But the questioning of this rule, and investigation into it, led men to see that true beneficence is that which helps a man to do the work which he is most fitted for, not that which keeps and encourages him in idleness; and that to neglect this distinction in the present is to prepare pauperism and misery for the future. By this testing and discussion not only has practice been purified and made more beneficent, but the very conception of beneficence has been made wider and wiser. Now here the great social heirloom consists of two parts: the instinct of beneficence, which makes a certain side of our nature, when predominant, wish to do good to men; and the intellectual conception of beneficence, which we can compare with any proposed course of conduct and ask, "Is this beneficent or not?" (Note 73) By the continual asking and answering of such questions the conception grows in breadth and distinctness, and the instinct becomes strengthened and purified. It appears, then, that the great use of the conception, the intellectual part of the heirloom, is to enable us to ask questions; that it grows and is kept straight by means of these questions; and if we do not use it for that purpose we shall gradually lose it altogether, and be left with a mere code of regulations which cannot rightly be called morality at all. (Note 74)

Such considerations apply even more obviously and clearly, if possible, to the store of beliefs and conceptions which our fathers have amassed for us in respect of the material world. We are ready to laugh at the rule of thumb of the Australian who continues to tie his hatchet to the side of the handle, although the Birmingham fitter has made a hole on purpose for him to put the handle in. His people have tied up hatchets so for ages: who is he that he should set himself up against their wisdom? He has sunk so low that he cannot do what some of them must have done in the far distant past—call in question an established usage, and invent or learn something better. Yet here, in the dim beginning of knowledge, where science and art are one, we find only the same simple rule which applies to the highest and deepest growths of that cosmic Tree; to its loftiest flower-tipped branches as well as to the profoundest of its hidden roots; the rule, namely, that what is stored up and handed down to us is rightly used by those who act as the makers acted, when they stored it up; those who use it to ask further questions, to examine, to investigate; who try honestly and solemnly to find out what is the right way of looking at things and of dealing with them. (Note 75)

A question rightly asked is already half answered, said Jacobi; we may

add that the method of solution is the other half of the answer, and that the actual result counts for nothing by the side of these two. (Note 76) For an example let us go to the telegraph, where theory and practice, grown each to years of discretion, are marvellously wedded for the fruitful service of men. Ohm found that the strength of an electric current is directly proportional to the strength of the battery which produces it, and inversely as the length of the wire along which it has to travel. This is called Ohm’s law; but the result, regarded as a statement to be believed, is not the valuable part of it. The first half of the question: what relation holds good between these quantities? So put, the question involves already the conception of strength of current, and of strength of battery, as quantities to be measured and compared; it hints clearly that these are the things to be attended to in the study of electric currents. The second half is the method of investigation; how to measure these quantities, what instruments are required for the experiment, and how are they to be used? The student who begins to learn about electricity is not asked to believe in Ohm’s law: he is made to understand the question, he is placed before the apparatus, and he is taught to verify it. He learns to do things, not to think he knows things; to use instruments and to ask questions, not to accept a traditional statement. The question which required a genius to ask it rightly is answered by a tiro. If Ohm’s law were suddenly lost and forgotten by all men, while the question and the method of solution remained, the result could be rediscovered in an hour. But the result by itself, if known to a people who could not comprehend the value of the question or the means of solving it, would be like a watch in the hands of a savage who could not wind it up, or an iron steamship worked by Spanish engineers. (Note 77)

In regard, then, to the sacred tradition of humanity, we learn that it consists, not in propositions or statements which are to be accepted and believed on the authority of the tradition, but in questions rightly asked, in conceptions which enable us to ask further questions, and in methods of answering questions. The value of all these things depends on their being tested day by day. (Note 78) The very sacredness of the precious deposit imposes upon us the duty and the responsibility of testing it, of purifying and enlarging it to the utmost of our power. He who makes use of its results to stifle his own doubts, or to hamper the inquiry of others, is guilty of a sacrilege which centuries shall never be able to blot out. (Note 79)  When the labours and questionings of honest and brave men shall have built up the fabric of known truth to a glory which we in this generation can neither hope for nor imagine, in that pure and holy temple he shall have no part nor lot, but his name and his works shall be cast out into the darkness of oblivion for ever. (Note 80) 

 

 

III. THE LIMITS OF INFERENCE

The question in what cases we may believe that which goes beyond our experience, is a very large and delicate one, extending to the whole range of scientific method, and requiring a considerable increase in the application of it before it can be answered with anything approaching to completeness. But one rule, lying on the threshold of the subject, of extreme simplicity and vast practical importance, may here be touched upon and shortly laid down. (Note 81)

A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions. A burnt child dreads the fire, because it believes that the fire will burn it to-day just as it did yesterday; but this belief goes beyond experience, and assumes that the unknown fire of to-day is like the known fire of yesterday. Even the belief that the child was burnt yesterday goes beyond present experience, which contains only the memory of a burning, and not the burning itself; it assumes, therefore, that this memory is trustworthy, although we know that a memory may often be mistaken. (Note 82) But if it is to be used as a guide to action, as a hint of what the future is to be, it must assume something about that future, namely, that it will be consistent with the supposition that the burning really took place yesterday; which is going beyond experience. Even the fundamental "I am," which cannot be doubted, is no guide to action until it takes to itself "I shall be," which goes beyond experience. The question is not, therefore, "May we believe what goes beyond experience?" for this is involved in the very nature of belief; but "How far and in what manner may we add to our experience in forming our beliefs?"  (Note 83)

And an answer, of utter simplicity and universality, is suggested by the example we have taken: a burnt child dreads the fire. We may go beyond experience by assuming that what we do not know is like what we do know; or, in other words, we may add to our experience on the assumption of a uniformity in nature. What this uniformity precisely is, how we grow in the knowledge of it from generation to generation, these are questions which for the present we lay aside, being content to examine two instances which may serve to make plainer the nature of the rule. (Note 84)  

From certain observations made with the spectroscope, we infer the existence of hydrogen in the sun. By looking into the spectroscope when the sun is shining on its slit, we see certain definite bright lines: and experiments made upon bodies on the earth have taught us that when these bright lines are seen hydrogen is the source of them. We assume, then, that the unknown bright lines in the sun are like the known bright lines of the laboratory, and that hydrogen in the sun behaves as hydrogen under similar circumstances would behave on the earth.

But are we not trusting our spectroscope too much? Surely, having found it to be trustworthy for terrestrial substances, where its statements can be verified by man, we are justified in accepting its testimony in other like cases; but not when it gives us information about things in the sun, where its testimony cannot be directly verified by man?

Certainly, we want to know a little more before this inference can be justified; and fortunately we do know this. The spectroscope testifies to exactly the same thing in the two cases; namely, that light-vibrations of a certain rate are being sent through it. Its construction is such that if it were wrong about this in one case, it would be wrong in the other. When we come to look into the matter, we find that we have really assumed the matter of the sun to be like the matter of the earth, made up of a certain number of distinct substances; and that each of these, when very hot, has a distinct rate of vibration, by which it may be recognised and singled out from the rest. But this is the kind of assumption which we are justified in using when we add to our experience. It is an assumption of uniformity in nature, and can only be checked by comparison with many similar assumptions which we have to make in other such cases.  (Note 85)

But is this a true belief, of the existence of hydrogen in the sun? Can it help in the right guidance of human action?

Certainly not, if it is accepted on unworthy grounds, and without some understanding of the process by which it is got at. But when this process is taken in as the ground of the belief, it becomes a very serious and practical matter. (Note 86) For if there is no hydrogen in the sun, the spectroscope—that is to say, the measurement of rates of vibration—must be an uncertain guide in recognising different substances; and consequently it ought not to be used in chemical analysis—in assaying, for example—to the great saving of time, trouble, and money. Whereas the acceptance of the spectroscopic method as trustworthy has enriched us not only with new metals, which is a great thing, but with new processes of investigation, which is vastly greater. (Note 87)

For another example, let us consider the way in which we infer the truth of an historical event—say the siege of Syracuse in the Peloponnesian war. Our experience is that manuscripts exist which are said to be and which call themselves manuscripts of the history of Thucydides; that in other manuscripts, stated to be by later historians, he is described as living during the time of the war; and that books, supposed to date from the revival of learning, tell us how these manuscripts had been preserved and were then acquired. We find also that men do not, as a rule, forge books and histories without a special motive; we assume that in this respect men in the past were like men in the present; and we observe that in this case no special motive was present. That is, we add to our experience on the assumption of a uniformity in the characters of men. Because our knowledge of this uniformity is far less complete and exact than our knowledge of that which obtains in physics, inferences of the historical kind are more precarious and less exact than inferences in many other sciences. (Note 88)

But if there is any special reason to suspect the character of the persons who wrote or transmitted certain books, the case becomes altered. If a group of documents give internal evidence that they were produced among people who forged books in the names of others, and who, in describing events, suppressed those things which did not suit them, while they amplified such as did suit them; who not only committed these crimes, but gloried in them as proofs of humility and zeal; then we must

say that upon such documents no true historical inference can be founded, but only unsatisfactory conjecture.

We may, then, add to our experience on the assumption of a uniformity in nature; we may fill in our picture of what is and has been, as experience gives it us, in such a way as to make the whole consistent with this uniformity. And practically demonstrative inference—that which gives us a right to believe in the result of it—is a clear showing that in no other way than by the truth of this result can the uniformity of nature be saved.

No evidence, therefore, can justify us in believing the truth of a statement which is contrary to, or outside of, the uniformity of nature. (Note 89) If our experience is such that it cannot be filled up consistently with uniformity, all we have a right to conclude is that there is something wrong somewhere; but the possibility of inference is taken away; we must rest in our experience, and not go beyond it at all. If an event really happened which was not a part of the uniformity of nature, it would have two properties: no evidence could give the right to believe it to any except those whose actual experience it was; and no inference worthy of belief could be founded upon it at all. (Note 90)  

Are we then bound to believe that nature is absolutely and universally uniform? Certainly not; we have no right to believe anything of this kind. The rule only tells us that in forming beliefs which go beyond our experience, we may make the assumption that nature is practically uniform so far as we are concerned. Within the range of human action and verification, we may form, by help of this assumption, actual beliefs; beyond it, only those hypotheses which serve for the more accurate asking of questions. (Note 91)

To sum up:—

We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know. (Note 92)

We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it. (Note 93)  

It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe. (Note 94)  

 

 

Footnotes

1. Areopagitica. Back.

2. Aids to Reflections. Back.Introduction to my Notes:

I first knew of Clifford's dictum - "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence" - somewhere in the 1970ies, and immediately liked it, and thought it a slight exaggeration, but an excellent ideal.

This I still think, and so I was quite pleased to find several copies of the full text of Clifford's "Ethics of Belief" on the internet, and indeed also several copies of just the first part of it.

The text of Clifford's essay that I reproduce on my site is the full text, to which I have made 94 notes, divided over three files.

The reason to make these notes is to clarify or qualify Clifford's text, which I regard as a classic of clearheaded scientific rational thinking, and to explain such things as might be currently necessary, some 117 years after the text was originally published. 

You can read Clifford's text without my notes, or you can read my notes and click on the many links to the Text to get back to the paragraph of the original that contains my quotation that occasioned some comment.

Maarten MaartenszAmsterdam, July 2004

Note 1: In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.

Of course, the point of this introductory paragraph is in this last sentence, and the weight lies at two places: "In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction" - which were irrational and unreasonable ways of arriving at a convinction, and the last part, what the conviction thus reached practically was in aid of: "he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales".

And the general assumptions Clifford here seems to make may be stated as follows:

Any belief a person has may have been founded rationally and reasonably or not.

If a belief is founded rationally, it is consistent and based on real evidence.

If a belief is founded reasonably, the amount and quality of the evidence is proportionate to the importance of the belief.

The first point is a mere matter of logic, but if it is to make a real difference we must also presume that

normally and usually people are free to make up their own minds by gathering evidence and reasoning on the basis of that.

The second point lays briefly down what it is for a belief to be called rational: It must be consistent (for an inconsistent set of beliefs is always false) and it must be based on real evidence - statements of fact or logic that other persons can test the validity of in terms of principles that are intersubjectively and logically valid.

What "intersubjectively and logically valid" means or should mean is again a difficult question, but the underlying point is clear enough: There is no ground for intellectual agreement or disagreement between people without some agreed standards to judge statements.

The third point lays briefly down what it is for a belief to be reasonable: The evidence one has for it is proportionate to the importance one attributes to it.

Thus, if one believes that a certain belief - whatever it is - is important one should, if one holds the belief in a reasonable manner, have a lot of evidence for or against it, and if one believes a certain belief is not important one need have little evidence for it.  Text. 

Note 2: What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts. And although in the end he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it.

Here we have to make a small proviso in judging him "verily guilty of the death of those men", namely that indeed the ship went down because measures its owner could and should have taken given such knowledge as he had about the ship, but did not take, and not for reasons having nothing to do with the fact that these measures had not been taken.

There are two important claims here.

First: "the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him."

This is an important point because the faithful and fanatics of all beliefs, creeds and political convictions believe quite otherwise, namely that

something is true and important because they strongly feel and believe it is, usually because they also believe that what they believe is true and important will serve their interests.

In brief: Neither sincerity, nor strength, nor conviction are in any way sufficient to make a belief rational. What makes a belief rational is only its logical relation to evidence. And indeed, it should be minimally such as to be more probable than not given such the evidence one has, as this would be judged by impartial rational men who are at least as intelligent and as well-informed as oneself is.

Second: "he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it."

Here I think a proviso must be made that relates to human weaknesses: One's responsibility for one's own opinions is indeed one's own, but it is also commensurate with one's intelligence and courage. Some people are just not capable of seeing certain rational inferences others see clearly, and some people just do not have the courage to entertain the convictions they reached.  Text.

Note 3: "When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that."

The reasons are, first, that in the end one acts in a here and now for such reasons as one here and now has, and this will be so for all times that follows it, regardless of however better or other those later times are informed, and second, that acts should not be judged by their outcomes, but by their reasons, for one has control over one's reasoning but not over the world, or only to such extent as one reasons truly about it and has power to act and interfere.  Text. 

Note 4: "The question of right or wrong has to do with the origin of his belief, not the matter of it; not what it was, but how he got it; not whether it turned out to be true or false, but whether he had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him."

Put otherwise: A belief is right or wrong not because it turns out to be true or false, but because it was reached or not by a rational argument on the basis of evidence, and because such evidence as one had gathered was reasonable in being proportionate to the importance attributed to the belief.  Text.

Note 5: "There was once an island in which some of the inhabitants

professed a religion teaching neither the doctrine of original sin nor that of eternal punishment."

Here it should be remarked that W.K. Clifford lived on an island (England) where most inhabitants in fact did profess a religion teaching both the doctrine of original sin and of eternal punishment, and that he very probably believed none of it.

I quote from the article on Clifford on the excellent site on mathematicians by St. Andrews University: 

Macfarlane (..) tells us that

he was eccentric in appearance, habits and opinions.   Text.

Note 6: "For although they had sincerely and conscientiously believed in the charges they had made, yet they had no right to believe on such evidence as was before them. Their sincere convictions, instead of being honestly earned by patient inquiring, were stolen by listening to the voice of prejudice and passion."

Put otherwise: There is a right to believe - but it is strongly dependent on patient, rational inquiry, and easily disqualified by passion or prejudice. Text. 

Note 7: "Let us vary this case also, and suppose, other things remaining as before, that a still more accurate investigation proved the accused to have been really guilty. Would this make any difference in the guilt of the accusers? Clearly not; the question is not whether their belief was true or false, but whether they entertained it on wrong grounds."

This involves the same reasoning as in Note 4.  Text.

Note 8: "And they might be believed, but they would not thereby become honourable men. They would not be innocent, they would only be not found out."

It seems fair and relevant to remark that this is the situation in which most politicians and priests are: What such men claim is rarely rational and reasonable, and usually manufactured either by wishful thinking or deceit.  Text.

Note 9: "Every one of them, if he chose to examine himself in foro

conscientiae, would know that he had acquired and nourished a belief, when he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him; and therein he would know that he had done a wrong thing."

This I doubt in general, though it is true for rational and reasonable men. But then many men have strong beliefs that dispose them to disregard evidence.

For one example, not being a Catholic I believe the pope is mistaken on many matters of faith he believes he is right about. But I also believe that he will not see many matters as I do until and unless he gives up Catholicism. And conversely, the pope will think similarly about unbelievers like me.

For another example, there are quite a large number of personal judgments that are both important to oneself and not merely judged by one's standards of rationality and reason, and these concern such matters as whom one loves, what one likes, and what one's personal ends are.

These matters seem to be more a matter of personal desire than of personal belief, though it is also true that personal desires when combined with beliefs about the reality the desires are meant to be realized in can be both tested by testing the beliefs they are combined with, and can be tested as to whether they are practicable and have a tendency to succeed when practised.  Text.

Note 10: "It may be said, however, that in both these supposed cases it is not the belief which is judged to be wrong, but the action following upon it."

Here is a somewhat subtle point that Clifford will try to settle by insisting that a person's actions and a person's beliefs are intertwined much like effect and cause:

What one consciously and deliberately does and does not do depends on what one believes that will - probably - result from one's acts, and this in turn depends on what one believes in general about one's situation and place in it.  Text.    

Note 11: "In the first place, let us admit that, so far as it goes, this view of the case is right and necessary; right, because even when a man's belief is so fixed that he cannot think otherwise, he still has a choice in the action suggested by it, and so cannot escape the duty of investigating on the ground of the strength of his convictions; and necessary, because those who are not yet capable of controlling their feelings and thoughts must have a plain rule dealing with overt acts."

This refers to the point made and quoted in Note 10, and involves the relations between belief and action. As I pointed out there, I agree that one's acts and one's beliefs interdepend, in the sense that one will tend to try to do what one believes serves one's interests and one will tend not to try to do what one believes does not serve one's interests, but it seems also to me that there is a faculty of willing or deciding that intermediates between one's beliefs and desires on the one hand, and one's actions on the other hand.

The reason to assume such a faculty of willing or deciding, that operates independently of the faculties of believing and desiring, though informed by them, rather like a judge is supposed to be independent from the prosecution and defense, but informed by them, is that experience teaches that one always, if perhaps perversely or against one's own interests as one conceives of these, may decide to try to do the less probable than the more probable or the less desirable rather than the more desirable.    Text.

Note 12: "But this being premised as necessary, it becomes clear that it is not sufficient, and that our previous judgment is required to supplement it. For it is not possible so to sever the belief from the action it suggests as to condemn the one without condemning the other. No man holding a strong belief on one side of a question, or even wishing to hold a belief on one side, can investigate it with such fairness and completeness as if he were really in doubt and unbiased; so that the existence of a belief not founded on fair inquiry unfits a man for the performance of this necessary duty."

Yes, but here the point I made in Note 9 enters. It may be made in general terms as follows:

It seems a plain matter of fact that the vast majority of men is not able or not willing to judge quite a few matters without bias, and fairly, completely, rationally and reasonably. And these are especially those matters about which they have strong religious or political prejudices, or in which they have a strong personal interest.  Text.

Note 13: "Nor is it that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it."

This sounds much like Peirce, who made a similar point three years earlier than Clifford did, in "How to make out ideas clear".

Even so, it seems a slight exaggeration, in that everybody may have beliefs about remote things - the backside of the moon, the state of the world in 500 years, the teachings of faiths one anyway disbelieves - that may have little or no influence on one's acts.

But in general the relation between acts and beliefs seems to be as sketched in Notes 10 and 11.   Text.

Note 14: "He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart. If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole."

Put otherwise: Whatever specific belief one has at any moment depends on all one's beliefs on that moment. The reason is that it might and indeed would be different if some of ones other beliefs that entered into this particular belief were different - and the same holds again for these other beliefs.  

However, it does not depend on all one's beliefs to the same extent nor in the same way: If one is rational the influence of one belief on another will depend on whether or not both are implied by some theory one holds, and on the probabilistic degree of relevance of the one belief to the other, which is a measure of the difference the truth of the one makes to the probability of the other.   Text.

Note 15: "No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, i ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character for ever."

The reason was given in Note 14, including the qualification that not all beliefs one has at any moment are equally relevant to any specific belief one has at that moment.    Text.

Note 16: "And no one man's belief is in any case a private matter which concerns himself alone. Our lives our guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes. Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought, are common property, fashioned and perfected from age to age; an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as a precious deposit and a sacred trust to be handled on to the next one, not unchanged but enlarged and purified, with some clear marks of its proper handiwork."

No, not quite. For one thing, I don't believe that "no one man's belief is in

any case a private matter which concerns himself alone" and I also don't believe that "Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought, are common property".

As to the first point I don't believe:

Consider one man's love for his wife, and suppose it to be sincere, great, romantic, and an inspiration for him to do many things I hold good and admirable. Should it matter to me that I don't love his wife in the same way as he does, and that I therefore don't feel inspired like he does?

In short: This seems to me a good example of personal tastes, preferences and beliefs that are fairly considered to be personal and one which is best considered private - always in so far as these private beliefs do not seriously and evidently effect the chances for health and happiness of others.

As to the second point I don't believe:

One lives in society in order to further one's own and other's chances on health and happiness by cooperation, and this entails quite a few duties and rights - but not such as to make one's acts, or words, or ideas "common property".  Text.

Note 17: "Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live."

I agree with the sentiment, but feel it is here a bit exaggerated. However, what seems true is that this privilege and this responsiblity are both more or less proportionate to one's talents.   Text.

Note 18: "In the two supposed cases which have been considered, it has been judged wrong to believe on insufficient evidence, or to nourish belief by suppressing doubts and avoiding investigation. The reason of this judgment is not far to seek: it is that in both these cases the belief held by one man was of great importance to other men. But forasmuch as no belief held by one man, however seemingly trivial the belief, and however obscure the believer, is ever actually insignificant or without its effect on the fate of mankind, we have no choice but to extend our judgment to all cases of belief whatever."

With provisos, to be sure:

Whether you believe the soup is better with a little more salt, or that your shoes are nicer than mine, seems less important than your beliefs about

physics or politics - and if you are not a person of great intelligence who has given himself much trouble to make your opinions about physics or politics rational and reasonable, then I may act wisely about your beliefs concerning physics or politics, while holding them of more importance than those you hold about your soup or my shoes, by not giving much attention to them.

In short: Not all beliefs of all persons are equally important or relevant, and there is a considerable amount of personal opinions and tastes that are best considered private in most circumstances, indeed because, whatever they are, they will not materially influence the chances of most or all other men for health and happiness.  Text.

Note 19: "Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves but for humanity."

Here lie two fundamental points of principle: First: Is it belief that prompts the decisions of our will? And second: Are our beliefs for humanity but not for ourselves?

As to what prompts the decisions of our will:

I do not believe one's beliefs "prompt" these, but I do believe one's beliefs guide and constrain one's decisions - which are prompted by one's will, which is a separate faculty apart and independent from one's beliefs, as is shown by the fact that one can always, possibly perversely, decide and will to act counter to what one believes is right.

As to whether our beliefs are for humanity or ourselves:

It seems to me our beliefs are important to others to the extent that we could and should rationally have known that they are relevant to another's chances of harm or happiness, but that quite often we cannot rationally know so, and also that each of us both lives in his or her own private version of the world we all live in, and has a freedom to act and believe, and acts and believes both for his own interests and those of others.

But it is easy to be seduced into totalitarianism, and so - with the evidence about totalitarianism in the 20th Century - I am a little careful with claims of acts supposedly "not for ourselves but for humanity"   Text.

Note 20: "Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his beliefs with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away."

The problem is that - as the world tends to be - generally one's fellows will not praise one because one is rational and reasonable but because one is like them and one supports their prejudices.

So I would like to rephrase this as: Whoso would deserve a rational and reasonable self-respect, etc.  Text. 

Note 21: "It is not only the leader of men, statesmen, philosopher, or poet, that owes this bounden duty to mankind. Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race. Every hard-worked wife of an artisan may transmit to her children beliefs which shall knit society together, or rend it in pieces. No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe."

Again, this seems to me a little exaggerated. One may fairly require of all men and women that they be rational and reasonable in all their beliefs and acts - but one should know the capacities of all men and women to be so vary a lot, and that one should in general require and expect no more than another is capable of.

Another relevant consideration, apart from ability and opportunity, is that one often is pressed for time, and forced to make choices, and indeed forced to make these choices also in far less ideal, quiet and unconstrained circumstances than one believes their importance merits.

Finally, if indeed most men and women live lifes constrained by all manner of pressures and difficulties, it seems more just to require them to be reasonable - to treat others fairly, justly and kindly - and try to be happy, since most misdeeds are committed by unhappy people, rather than that they try to be rational, since this last demand requires much in the way of intelligence, opportunity and effort. And it is easier, usually, to be reasonable than to be rational, just as it is usually easier to be kind than clever.  Text. 

Note 22: "It is true that this duty is a hard one, and the doubt which comes out of itis often a very bitter thing. It leaves us bare and powerless where we thought that we were safe and strong. To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances."

It may be fairly doubted that it is humanly possible "To know all about anything": All human knowledge is partial, schematic, incomplete, abstracted from much circumstantial detail, and based on guess-work.

Also, it is a good moral principle that "non posse nemo obligatur": What is not possible cannot be a duty to anyone. (And this also concerns rational

thinking.)  Text.

Note 23: "But if the belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence, the pleasure is a stolen one. Not only does it deceive ourselves by giving us a sense of power which we do not really possess, but it is sinful, because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind."

I suppose one reason for Clifford to write "sinful" is to relate it not to one's supposed duties to God but to one's "duty to mankind".  Text.   

Note 24: "That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from pestilence, which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town. What would be thought of one who, for the sake of a sweet fruit, should deliberately run the risk of delivering a plague upon his family and his neighbours?"

What one could think of is the parallel with the Bible and original sin. Apart from that, what one should think of, knowing a little of the history of the 20th C, is of fascism, communism and other forms of mental and dictatorial pestilence, which indeed in the end depended on the individual choices of individual men and women.  Text.

Note 25: "And, as in other such cases, it is not the risk only which has to be considered; for a bad action is always bad at the time when it is done, no matter what happens afterwards. Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing evidence."

And the reason is that "Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons" we make ourselves believe something that is unreasonable and may influence our other beliefs.   Text.

Note 26: "We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great and wide. But a greater and wider evil arises when the credulous character is maintained and supported, when a habit of believing for unworthy reasons is fostered and made permanent."

Let's first note what it is, among other things, that "We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to": The millions of iniquities, wasted lifes, persecutions and murders in the name of some irrational political creed like fascism or communism, or in the name of some irrational religious

creed like Christianity or Mohammedanism.

To all this and much more Voltaire's dictum strongly applies:   "If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." commit atrocities."

And let's note what Clifford claims is ultimately the foundation of these many human horrors and actrocities: "the credulous character" - of the sincere followers, the faithful servants, the willing conformists that actually committed the crimes of fascism, communism, Christianity, or Mohammedanism.  Text.

Note 27: "If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done from the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest. What hurts society is not that it should lose its property, but that it should become a den of thieves, for then it must cease to be society. This is why we ought not to do evil, that good may come; for at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil and are made wicked thereby."

This may sound a little Victorian, but the underlying reasoning is correct: Both to steal and to believe something on unworthy evidence is immoral and demoralizes those who commit these deeds. And indeed, what demoralizes when one believes things on unworthy evidence is precisely that wherever this is not due to stupidity it is based on dishonesty.    Text

Note 28: "In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery."

What Clifford is claiming here may be otherwise put thus: Western societies since the Renaissance and Galileo have been factually based on science and the technology this enabled, and they owed their advantages over other types of societies - such as e.g. better ships and better guns in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries - to science.

And science in the end is based on the spirit of free enquiry, free discussion, logical reasoning and empirical experimentation. Therefore, indeed it is a danger to a society thus dependent on science to "become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them".   Text

Note 29: "The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs. Habitual want of care about what I believe leads to habitual want of care in others about the truth of what is told to me. Men speak the truth of one another when each reveres the truth in his own mind and in the other's mind; but how shall my friend revere the truth in my mind when I myself am careless about it, when I believe thing because I want to believe them, and because they are comforting and pleasant?"

See first Note 28. I agree with Clifford, but also must note that what he argued for and I agree with - say: the fundamental social and human importance of belief founded on rational reasoning and empirical investigation in a climate of free inquiry and discussion - is something that seems fit, in actual empirical fact, to a minority of men and women, namely mostly those who are scientists or whose outlook is scientific.

And unfortunately so far in any normal society this type of human being - say: the rational kind - has been in a minority, even though it is a minority from which most contributors to science and civilization issued.    Text.

Note 30: "Will he not learn to cry, "Peace," to me, when there is no peace? By such a course I shall surround myself with a thick atmosphere of falsehood and fraud, and in that I must live. It may matter little to me, in my cloud-castle of sweet illusions and darling lies; but it matters much to Man that I have made my neighbours ready to deceive."

Indeed - but as I remarked in Note 29 it seems to me an indubitable fact that the vast majority of men and women everywhere and always seem to have much preferred to live in "a thick atmosphere of falsehood and fraud", in a "cloud-castle of sweet illusions and darling lies" - and one reason was that the vast majority of their neighbours likewise much preferred this, and were willing to force anyone who dared deviate from the social norms and practices back into conformity, or into a madhouse or a grave.   Text.

Note 31: "The credulous man is father to the liar and the cheat; he lives in the bosom of this his family, and it is no marvel if he should become even as they are."  

Yes indeed - but let us be honest and clearminded enough to admit that the "credulous man" so far always and everywhere formed the majority, and was proud to be credulous, and quite willing to persecute anyone who was not.

Here are a few relevant statistics about the late 20th century, more than

100 years after Clifford wrote:

"The scientific world view is very rare. My guess is that at least 99% of all currently living human adults have a non-scientific world view and way of thinking. Most people probably base their lives on religion and/or magic. (..) let me amuse the reader by mentioning some results a Gallup investigation conducted in the U.S. in 1978 produced. According to it, 57% of all Americans believe in ufos, 54% in angels, 51% in ESP, 39% in devils, 37% in precognition, 29% in astrology, 24% in clairvoyance, and (only!) 11% in ghosts." (pag. 226 van R. Tuomela, "Science, Action, and Reality", D. Reidel Pub. Comp. 1985, ISBN 90-277-2098-3.)

And let's also note that 2500 years before Clifford wrote the Buddha already noticed this: "Stupidity and egoism are the roots of all vice".   Text.

Note 32: "To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."  

And here we have arrived at Clifford's dictum, which deserves to be cast in stone above the entries of all schools and universities, even if it is too demanding an ideal to practice always, like most ideals, and because it is at least an ideal of rationality and reason, and not of faith or politics.  

Also, it is not hard to indicate the fair exceptions to his rule:

Those beliefs that when acted upon have consequences that are limited to oneself

Those beliefs that are based on personal preferences

Those beliefs that are forced by circumstances

I am imprecize here, but this cannot be avoided. Here are a few precisifications:

The beliefs with consequences limited to oneself are excepted just because and to the extent one is oneself the only possible victim of one's false beliefs. The beliefs based on personal preferences are excepted because one's likes and dislikes are not only and often not much dependent on one's beliefs, while in any case what is not excepted are the plans and proposals motivated by one's likes and dislikes, for these are beliefs like other beliefs, and require rational scrutinity by oneself and others. And the beliefs forced by circumstances mostly have to do with time-pressures and insufficient information: Here and now one must - for example - either operate the patient or wait for more information with the

chance that the patient dies.

And in any case: Though there are exceptions to Clifford's dictum, and though the principles it embodies are ideal rather than always practicable, the exceptions are exceptions only, and ought to be rationally argued when made an exception.

Apart from this: "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."

And to supplement this with a positive injunction:

      It is always right to try to think rationally and try to act reasonably.   Text.

Note 33: "If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it--the life of that man is one long sin against mankind"

Obviously, as quite a few others of Clifford's remarks, this is directed against religion as it is normally believed and practised. And indeed, most faithful believers of most religions have tended to be believe it is "impious (to ask) those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it--the life of that man is one long sin against mankind" and thus have insisted that people led lifes that were, according to Clifford's standards, "one long sin against mankind". 

But then Clifford is right that religion as it is normally practised and believed is not compatible with rationality, science or indeed the ideal of only trying to believe what is worthy of belief in a rational sense.  Text.

Note 34:

A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determine, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.

This is from Milton, but it means little more than that followers and conformists have handed over their own judgments to their leaders or role-models, have ceased to judge for themselves, and therefore can not be relied upon as independent witnesses or thinkers, and run the same cognitive risks as those they imitate.   Text.

Note 35:

He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and end loving himself better than all. 

This is from Coleridge, and it should be added that the vast majority of virtually all religious and political creeds love their own creed, their own leaders, and their own group far better than truth or rationality or indeed morals, for here also fits a very pertinent quotation from Orwell, with my stresses:

"Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no outrage - torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonments without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians, which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side." (The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol 3, p. 419, written in May 1945.)

Unfortunately, so far in human history rational and reasonable men and women have been in a small minority - though it was the minority that elevated all of mankind from bestiality and primitiveness, and that discovered or invented science and civilization, and handed it through to posterity.   Text.

Note 36:  "Inquiry into the evidence of a doctrine is not to be made once for all, and then taken as finally settled. It is never lawful to stifle a doubt; for either it can be honestly answered by means of the inquiry already made, or else it proves that the inquiry was not complete."

Precisely, except that I would have said "moral" or "rational" rather than "lawful". And again Clifford seems to be in part argueing against the religiously faithful of his time, for these held the opposite doctrine mostly. Text.

Note 37: " "But," says one, "I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments."

Then he should have no time to believe."

Perhaps so - but he may have little choice in believing as he does, being placed as he is. So what's more relevant and important:

You may believe as you please - indeed, you will tend to do so anwyay -

but you may not act upon such non-rationally founded beliefs as are important to the chances of health or happiness of others, nor may you insist that your beliefs are more important than the trouble you have given yourself to give them a rational foundation. Mere faith is not enough, especially not where it effects the chances of others.    Text.

 

II. THE WEIGHT OF AUTHORITY

Note 38: "Are we then to become universal sceptics, doubting everything, afraid always to put one foot before the other until we have personally tested the firmness of the road? Are we to deprive ourselves of the help and guidance of that vast body of knowledge which is daily growing upon the world, because neither we nor any other one person can possibly test a hundredth part of it by immediate experiment or observation, and because it would not be completely proved if we did? Shall we steal and tell lies because we have had no personal experience wide enough to justify the belief that it is wrong to do so?"

Clearly, what Clifford wants to answer to all questions is: "No, emphatically no!". Were it different, then he could not have written the first part, for one reason. In any case, the questions are mostly rhetorical, but it is well to realize that "neither we nor any other one person can possibly test a hundredth part" of whatever one seriously believes.

However, there are two pertinent considerations here:

First, every man who has survived so far must have some beliefs that are adequate to the facts and no beliefs he has acted on which are seriously false, for else he would be dead. (Of course, this does not necessarily mean that such a man does not have seriously mistaken beliefs, but only that he has not tested them seriously by acting on them.)

Second, every man has certain knowledge of at least two kinds: Of the natural language in which he may insist he is certain of nothing - for he must at least be capable of knowing sufficient of the language to state his beliefs; and of an infinity of things that he knows that he does not know, for every man may know about very many things that he does not know all or much about them.    Text.

Note 39: "The beliefs about right and wrong which guide our actions in dealing with men in society, and the beliefs about physical nature which guide our actions in dealing with animate and inanimate bodies, these never suffer from investigation; they can take care of themselves, without being propped up by "acts of faith," the clamour of paid advocates, or the

suppression of contrary evidence."

This seems one of the points Clifford wanted to insist on - and the point is, of course, that beliefs about physics and ethics "never suffer from investigation". It is quite likely that most of his contemporaries thought otherwise, and indeed Clifford's opinion is a minority-opinion of truly scientifically minded persons.   Text.

Note 40: "Moreover there are many cases in which it is our duty to act upon probabilities, although the evidence is not such as to justify present belief; because it is precisely by such action, and by observation of its fruits, that evidence is got which may justify future belief. So that we have no reason to fear lest a habit of conscientious inquiry should paralyse the actions of our daily life."

This is a quite important point, and it should be stressed that one can know truly that such and such statement of probability- say: the probability of throwing a six with a fair die is 1/6 - is true.   Text.

Note 41: "But because it is not enough to say, "It is wrong to believe on unworthy evidence," without saying also what evidence is worthy, we shall now go on to inquire under what circumstances it is lawful to believe on the testimony of others; and then, further, we shall inquire more generally when and why we may believe that which goes beyond our own experience, or even beyond the experience of mankind." 

Note that Clifford has explained, in Part I, why "It is wrong to believe on unworthy evidence": Because mistaken beliefs lead to mistaken beliefs, and mistaken beliefs when acted upon will not lead to success and likely will harm the actor or others.

But surely it is correct to give sime sort of explanation of what evidence is "worthy" - though it should be obvious that, firstly, any prediction and any expectation, in as much as they refer to the future, go beyond one's own experience and that of mankind, and secondly, that in order to test a belief one does need to derive some prediction that is entailed by it and is as yet untested, for if it is tested and true it must be part of one's evidence.  Text.

Note 42: "In what cases, then, let us ask in the first place, is the testimony of a man unworthy of belief? He may say that which is untrue either knowingly or unknowingly. In the first case he is lying, and his moral character is to blame; in the second case he is ignorant or mistaken, and it is only his knowledge or his judgment which is in fault."   

Indeed, but the subject is somewhat more complicated, though there is this basic distinction that one's purported beliefs may be based on lies or ignorance.

What makes it more complicated than a simple choice between either is that most beliefs human beings express seem to involve a bit of both: One tends to at least slightly exaggerate one's confidence in one's own opinions, and also one's knowledge of evidence for one's opinions- and both may be psychologically necessary or helpful in maintaining these beliefs at all.   Text.

Note 43: "In order that we may have the right to accept his testimony as ground for believing what he says, we must have reasonable grounds for trusting his veracity, that he is really trying to speak the truth so far as he knows it; his knowledge, that he has had opportunities of knowing the truth about this matter; and his judgment, that he has made proper use of those opportunities in coming to the conclusion which he affirms."

This is quite so, and the list of requirements - honest, knowledgeable, informed, impartial - to trust the judgment of a purported specialist about something is quite apt.

The only qualification one has to make is that of Note 42: Even the most honest, knowledgeable and informed scientists, at least in so much as he is human, tends to favour his own opinions, about which indeed he is most expert on.    

But this common human weakness is no real hindrance - as long as everyone who is qualified is free and in principle capable of correcting one's mistakes in an open and rational debate.  Text.

Note 44: "However plain and obvious these reasons may be, so that no man of ordinary intelligence, reflecting upon the matter, could fail to arrive at them, it is nevertheless true that a great many persons do habitually disregard them in weighing testimony."  

Indeed, one may safely assert more: Not merely "a great many persons" but normally, except perhaps amongst scientists, the vast majority. For this there are quite a few reasons, of which I name a few:

Wishful thinking and its variants conformism and chauvinism tend to be both psychologically pleasing and socially rewarded. 

There are usually strong social pressures, even in democracies, towards some opinions and against others. 

It is extra-ordinarily rare to meet a person who is only interested in the truth, and not also in how this supposed truth effects his

own chances for income, status, riches or fame.   Text.

Note 45: "But if we chose to grant him all these assumptions, for the sake of argument, and because it is difficult both for the faithful and for infidels to discuss them fairly and without passion, still we should have something to say which takes away the ground of his belief, and therefore shows that it is wrong to entertain it. Namely this: the character of Mohammed is excellent evidence that he was honest and spoke the truth so far as he knew it; but it is no evidence at all that he knew what the truth was."

This is part of a longer discussion by Clifford of the claims of Mohammedanism - which he probably selected to discuss because he felt quite the same about the prophet Jesus, but knew that saying so in his society might make him loose a considerable part of his audience.

Apart from that, the point Clifford makes is a simple and valid one, and one that is very often missed by sincere believers and followers of whatever charismatic religious or political leader:

Honesty and sincerity about one's own convictions are not at all sufficient grounds for these convictions - as everyone should know, since everyone must have experienced cases in which one was sincerely convinced of some untruth.    Text.

Note 46: "What means could he have of knowing that the form which appeared to him to be the angel Gabriel was not a hallucination, and that his apparent visit to Paradise was not a dream? Grant that he himself was fully persuaded and honestly believed that he had the guidance of heaven, and was the vehicle of a supernatural revelation, how could he know that this strong conviction was not a mistake?"

As I pointed out in Note 45, the same sort of questions can and should be asked of Jesus and the Christian prophets, of Buddha, and of any other person who believes or pretends he has some deep insight in the nature of the universe that is hidden to others.

Incidentally, here is another question that concerns the fact that so many of the many Holy Books of mankind are contradictory amongst each other, and although supposedly inspired by God himself usually without the least glimmer of sound and useful information that an all-knowing all-powerful benevolent God surely could, would and should have given to His Chosen People, and full of claims about the nature of the universe that are completely at odds with a great lot of really well-researched science. Why is this so?   Text.

Note 47: "But if my visitor were a real visitor, and for a long time gave me information which was found to be trustworthy, this would indeed be good ground for trusting him in the future as to such matters as fall within human powers of verification; but it would not be ground for trusting his testimony as to any other matters."

This still concerns the claimed visits of the archangel Gabriel to Mohammed. What makes it obvious - except for devout Muslims who prefer to be not rational about their own faith, like most non-Muslims about theirs - that the vast probability is that Mohammed was mistaken or lied is that there is no good evidence for angels of any kind of any faith, and that the archangel Gabriel remained hidden from the contemporaries of Mohammed. (If I tell you I have a real living lustful Greek talking mermaid hidden in my garage in an old bathtub, but you are not allowed to see it, you may rationally believe me to be insane or a liar.)  Text.

Note 48: "For although his tested character would justify me in believing that he spoke the truth so far as he knew, yet the same question would present itself—what ground is there for supposing that he knows?"

Indeed - and this is the same point I made in Note 45, and one that people widely tend to miss when emotionally affected by some religious or political system of ideas.    Text.

Note 49: "For belief belongs to man, and to the guidance of human affairs: no belief is real unless it guide our actions, and those very actions supply a test of its truth."

It is better to say: No belief is tested unless it guides our actions, and to add that a belief that is not tested is a mere make-belief without any worthy rational ground.   

However, as I pointed out before, human motives and psychology are complicated, and it seems true that the political and religious beliefs of most men are embedded in a more or less consciously maintained set of fallacies and tricks that serve to defend the faith and isolate it from any rational criticism: One pooh-poohs critics; doubts their motives, sincerity or sanity; refuses to consider counter-evidence; disregards one's own relative ignorance of relevant science, philosophy, logic or mathematics; and generally does not discuss one's convictions with qualified and intelligent opponents, especially not if these have a gift for language and argument.   Text.

Note 50: "It requires, however, but little consideration to show that what has really been verified is not at all the supernal character of the

Prophet’s mission, or the trustworthiness of his authority in matters which we ourselves cannot test, but only his practical wisdom in certain very mundane things."

And the same holds, as Clifford no doubt meant to convey, for Christianity, Judaism and all other faiths based on the teachings of supposedly divinely inspired prophets.   Text.

Note 51: "The fact that believers have found joy and peace in believing gives us the right to say that the doctrine is a comfortable doctrine, and pleasant to the soul; but it does not give us the right to say that it is true. And the question which our conscience is always asking about that which we are tempted to believe is not, "Is it comfortable and pleasant?" but, "Is it true?" "

I agree in terms of logic, but not in terms of psychology: Alas, the great majority of men do not seem to possess a "conscience" that is "is always asking about that which we are tempted to believe is not, "Is it comfortable and pleasant?" but, "Is it true?"". Instead, the vast majority of men, including scientists, though these probably least of all, tends to arrive at their fundamental political and religious convictions by some irrational leap of faith that is mostly motivated by wishful thinking.   Text.

Note 52: "It is hardly in human nature that a man should quite accurately gauge the limits of his own insight; but it is the duty of those who profit by his work to consider carefully where he may have been carried beyond it."

This is quite true, and one of the many reasons that free rational discussion is so important, both for science, and for men in general. It cannot be helped that one is partial to one's own beliefs and feelings, and therefore one needs the rational arguments of others to correct that partiality - which exists, men being what they are, also if one is quite right in one's conviction, and has done one's rational best to research it.   Text.

Note 53: "If there were only he, and no other, with such claims! But there is Mohammed with his testimony; we cannot choose but listen to them both. The Prophet tells us that there is one God, and that we shall live for ever in joy or misery, according as we believe in the Prophet or not. The Buddha says that there is no God, and that we shall be annihilated by and by if we are good enough. Both cannot be infallibly inspired; one or other must have been the victim of a delusion, and thought he knew that which he really did not know. Who shall dare to say which? and how can we justify ourselves in believing that the other was not also deluded?"

We are still involved with Clifford's discussion of religious faith, and the problem he mentions here is part of the fact that there are at least 3500 religions that purport to be The One And Only Divine Truth and contradict all other 3499 True Religions.

The same holds for political creeds, which also have tended to be believed and maintained fanatically, irrationally, and against all evidence by sincere believers - who, as in the case of the major religions, have been quite willing to discriminate, persecute, repress, silence, lock up or murder their opponents, normally "in their own best interests", it was claimed, and "for the noblest and best of moral reasons".   Text.

Note 54: "We are led, then, to these judgments following. The goodness and greatness of a man do not justify us in accepting a belief upon the warrant of his authority, unless there are reasonable grounds for supposing that he knew the truth of what he was saying."

Precisely - as should be chiselled in stone above all churches, next to Cromwell's saying "By the bowels of Jesus Christ - I beseech thee to bethinkest thee that thou MAYEST be mistaken!".

And there is another matter of some importance here, related to the fact that so many have been murdered for religious reasons, supposedly according to the teachings of some infinitely powerful, benevolent and all-knowing divinity: Why is it that so many religions and religious people do not limit their teachings to morals, such as the excellent and widely shared "Do not do unto others as you would not be done unto", and leave the question of what reality is really like to science?   Text.

Note 55: "And there can be no grounds for supposing that a man knows that which we, without ceasing to be men, could not be supposed to verify." 

This is a somewhat implicit denial of all human claims to supernatural knowledge - to which religious prophets tend to be prone. And it should be mentioned that all claims of all supernatural knowledge of all prophets or frauds have been incredible to non-believers and usually have been easily refuted, if not by naive people than by professional stage-magicians (conjurors) who know what it takes to mislead and trick a naive audience.  Text.

Note 56: "If a chemist tells me, who am no chemist, that a certain substance can be made by putting together other substances in certain proportions and subjecting them to a known process, I am quite justified in believing this upon his authority, unless I know anything against his

character or his judgment. For his professional training is one which tends to encourage veracity and the honest pursuit of truth, and to produce a dislike of hasty conclusions and slovenly investigation. And I have reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the truth of what he is saying, for although I am no chemist, I can be made to understand so much of the methods and processes of the science as makes it conceivable to me that, without ceasing to be man, I might verify the statement."

Here we have again an illustration and sum-up of the marks that characterize a genuine expert: honesty, specific knowledge and training, impartiality.

And note Clifford's last point: One excellent mark of real science is that any of its propositions can be rationally tested by anyone with the time, the intelligence and the relevant background knowledge - and that there is no scientific proposition that rests on mere authority, and that there is no scientific proposition that is immune from rational criticism in terms of logic or evidence.   Text.

Note 57: "I may never actually verify it, or even see any experiment which goes towards verifying it; but still I have quite reason enough to justify me in believing that the verification is within the reach of human appliances and powers, and in particular that it has been actually performed by my informant. His result, the belief to which he has been led by his inquiries, is valid not only for himself but for others; it is watched and tested by those who are working in the same ground, and who know that no greater service can be rendered to science than the purification of accepted results from the errors which may have crept into them. It is in this way that the result becomes common property, a right object of belief, which is a social affair and matter of public business."  

It is true and important that a very important part of science consists of  "the purification of accepted results from the errors which may have crept into them", which happens by rational criticism and empirical research and experiment.

Likewise, it is true and important that science is a social affair.   Text.

Note 58: "Thus it is to be observed that his authority is valid because there are those who question it and verify it; that it is precisely this process of examining and purifying that keeps alive among investigators the love of that which shall stand all possible tests, the sense of public responsibility as of those whose work, if well done, shall remain as the enduring heritage of mankind."

And here another very important reason to prefer scientifically founded statements over statements founded upon other kinds of authority: Only

in science are disagreements settled in principle by rational argument and ascertained intersubjectively accessible facts.   Text.

Note 59: "But if my chemist tells me that an atom of oxygen has existed unaltered in weight and rate of vibration throughout all time I have no right to believe this on his authority, for it is a thing which he cannot know without ceasing to be man."

Here the example does not seem to be well-chosen, and indeed Clifford seems to contradict here what he affirms later: "We may go beyond experience by assuming that what we do not know is like what we do know; or, in other words, we may add to our experience on the assumption of a uniformity in nature."

In any case, it is of some importance to note that what one can verify are always particular statements, about specific things or relations, then and there existing or not, in specific circumstances, whereas such verified particular statements are used to appraise the value of sets of general statements that are the core of any serious theory, that tries to represent some feature of some real thing(s) in general, in all circumstances and at all times.

Consequently, any theory involves claims that go beyond such experience as one has - and indeed if it did not it could not be tested nor would it be of any use to explain anything we have not experienced, such as the future. Therefore any theory contains guesses, and no theory can be absolutely certain. (Incidentally, this is no reason not to use the most probable theory, and indeed real science is characterized by its ability to produce real technology that also works for those who do not believe in science or do not understand it. Religions, by contrast, if they work at all work only for their sincere believers, for easily understood psychological reasons, that mostly have to do with the real though imaginary satisfactions of wishful thinking.)

Finally, the ways in which theories rationally gain or loose in credibility depending on such empirical evidence as one has found so far, are well explained in principle by elementary probability theory, for example as rendered in my "Classical Probability Theory and Learning from Experience".   Text.

Note 60: "For although the statement may be capable of verification by man, it is certainly not capable of verification by him, with any means and appliances which he has possessed; and he must have persuaded himself of the truth of it by some means which does not attach any credit to his testimony. Even if, therefore, the matter affirmed is within the reach of human knowledge, we have no right to accept it upon authority unless it is within the reach of our informant’s knowledge."

See Note 59. The qualification that should be made here is that the principle involved may be not "within the reach of our informant’s knowledge", but may be somehow necessary, either in general or in a specific state of partial knowledge and partial ignorance, in order to find and establish further knowledge.

One example of such a principle is: "Human beings can learn from experience"; another is Clifford's own "we may add to our experience on the assumption of a uniformity in nature". Both may be false, and both go beyond present experience and present knowledge, but it is hard to see how human beings could reach rational beliefs without them, or would want to try if they believed otherwise. (For more along these lines see On The Logical Principles Of Scientific Explanation .)   Text.

Note 61: "What shall we say of that authority, more venerable and august than any individual witness, the time-honoured tradition of the human race? An atmosphere of beliefs and conceptions has been formed by the labours and struggles of our forefathers, which enables us to breathe amid the various and complex circumstances of our life. It is around and about us and within us; we cannot think except in the forms and processes of thought which it supplies. Is it possible to doubt and to test it? and if possible, is it right?"

Here Clifford in fact asks what is the value of tradition, of whatever kind.

The brief answer is: It is a mass of belief and practices that at some point may have helped some men to help them survive and have a somewhat better or more pleasant life than they would have without it.

And the general proviso is: Even so, that is no good reason to believe this is currently so, or is true for all ot other men, and is no reason at all not to rationally investigate and test traditional beliefs and practices.      Text.

Note 62: "We shall find reason to answer that it is not only possible and right, but our bounden duty; that the main purpose of the tradition itself is to supply us with the means of asking questions, of testing and inquiring into things; that if we misuse it, and take it as a collection of cut-and-dried statements to be accepted without further inquiry, we are not only injuring ourselves here, but, by refusing to do our part towards the building up of the fabric which shall be inherited by our children, we are tending to cut off ourselves and our race from the human line."  

Indeed - though it may not be "the main purpose of the tradition". Even so, any tradition that survived is surely good for something, or it would not have survived, and is surely fit to be questioned in all respects. For what cannot be questioned and debated must be a dictatorial belief, that is probably suited to help dictators survive, and is not rationally fit to be

believed.   Text.

Note 63: "Here the only reason for belief is that everybody has believed the thing for so long that it must be true. And yet the belief was founded on fraud, and has been propagated by credulity."  

This seems to be an adequate summary in two statements of the history of all religions.   Text.

Note 64: "That man will undoubtedly do right, and be a friend of men, who shall call it in question and see that there is no evidence for it, help his neighbours to see as he does, and even, if need be, go into the holy tent and break the medicine."

Here Clifford in fact insists on the importance of non-conformists: Individuals who dare to question current tradition or current practice, and who dare to oppose it by rational argument and, where necessary, by personal action (as even the Bible reports positively, where it concerns the overthrow of pre-Biblical religious beliefs and "heathen images").   Text.

Note 65: "The rule which should guide us in such cases is simple and obvious enough: that the aggregate testimony of our neighbours is subject to the same conditions as the testimony of any one of them. Namely, we have no right to believe a thing true because everybody says so unless there are good grounds for believing that some one person at least has the means of knowing what is true, and is speaking the truth so far as he knows it."  

This shows the major weakness of democratic majorities: There is strength in numbers, but no wit or reason. And indeed no majority knows more or indeed as much as its few independent individual rational thinkers - if there are any, for many a majority is based on nothing better or different than unthinking imitation and conformism.   Text.

Note 66: "However many nations and generations of men are brought into the witness-box they cannot testify to anything which they do not know. Every man who has accepted the statement from somebody else, without himself testing and verifying it, is out of court; his word is worth nothing at all."

Correctly: None of the words of followers and imitators add one iota to

rational evidence.   Text.

Note 67: "And when we get back at last to the true birth and beginning of the statement, two serious questions must be disposed of in regard to him who first made it: was he mistaken in thinking that he knew about this matter, or was he lying? "

As I explained in Note 49 matters are slightly more complicated in human psychological reality, though it remains true that any false statement that is made is made wittingly and thus a lie, or unwittingly and thus ignorantly, namely at least of the fact that it is in fact false, and quite possibly ignorantly of much relevant evidence.   Text.

Note 68: "This last question is unfortunately a very actual and practical one even to us at this day and in this country. We have no occasion to go to La Salette, or to Central Africa, or to Lourdes, for examples of immoral and debasing superstition. It is only too possible for a child to grow up in London surrounded by an atmosphere of beliefs fit only for the savage, which have in our own time been founded in fraud and propagated by credulity."

This is still as it was in the 19th Century - except that the forces of unreason are much helped by the popular press and TV. Two good books on pseudo-science and superstition are by Martin Gardner: "Fads and fallacies in the name of science" and "Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus".    Text. 

Note 69: "Laying aside, then, such tradition as is handed on without testing by successive generations, let us consider that which is truly built up out of the common experience of mankind. This great fabric is for the guidance of our thoughts, and through them of our actions, both in the moral and in the material world. In the moral world, for example, it gives us the conceptions of right in general, of justice, of truth, of beneficence, and the like. These are given as conceptions, not as statements or propositions; they answer to certain definite instincts which are certainly within us, however they came there."

First, it is not really true that superstitions and credulity are not "truly built up out of the common experience of mankind", and indeed it seems likely that a rational and reasonable human mind is less frequent than its opposite, even though this is unfortunate for the chances of mankind on real civilization.

Second, it is true that both rational and irrational belief are based on general conceptions, and also true that it is not easy to articulate these

clearly, whatever they are.

Third and last, it seems by and large quite justified to distinguish between (1) such beliefs as have been produced by some rational process on the basis of good evidence, which are scientific even if not necessarily part of science, since this also applies to enlightened common sense, and (2) such beliefs as have not been thus produced, and are therefore not scientific, and should be regarded with some skepticism, simply because they have not been thus produced and because everyone can and should know there is and has been a lot of foolishness and fraudulence in the human world.   Text.

Note 70: "That it is right to be beneficent is matter of immediate personal experience; for when a man retires within himself and there finds something, wider and more lasting than his solitary personality, which says, "I want to do right," as well as, "I want to do good to man," he can verify by direct observation that one instinct is founded upon and agrees fully with the other. And it is his duty so to verify this and all similar statements."

What is true, and related to being a social animal, is that it generally pleases to please those one likes, and that this seems to be one of the psychological foundations of benevolence. But it is less easy to say in simple and clear terms what doing good to others would consist of. I make a try in "What are good and bad?".     Text.

Note 71: "The tradition says also, at a definite place and time, that such and such actions are just, or true, or beneficent. For all such rules a further inquiry is necessary, since they are sometimes established by an authority other than that of the moral sense founded on experience."

The general point here is that what a tradition teaches should not be accepted without inquiry - and even if the traditions is sensible and helpful, it might be improved.   Text.

Note 72: "Until recently, the moral tradition of our own country—and indeed of all Europe—taught that it was beneficent to give money indiscriminately to beggars."

This I doubt for various reasons. For example, Mandeville doubted this in the beginning of the 18th Century, and Malthus in the beginning of the 19th Century, and both wrote in English, and very probably Clifford knew at least about Malthus. Also, I much doubt whether anyone has ever seriously believed that "to give money indiscriminately" is wise, desirable

or beneficent.     Text.

Note 73: "Now here the great social heirloom consists of two parts: the instinct of beneficence, which makes a certain side of our nature, when predominant, wish to do good to men; and the intellectual conception of beneficence, which we can compare with any proposed course of conduct and ask, "Is this beneficent or not?" "

That is: There are natural human motives and spurs to action, which are quite often at least in part inspired by some wish to do some good to somebody else, and there are more or less well-founded criterions by which one may judge such motives and acts.   Text.

Note 74: "It appears, then, that the great use of the conception, the intellectual part of the heirloom, is to enable us to ask questions; that it grows and is kept straight by means of these questions; and if we do not use it for that purpose we shall gradually lose it altogether, and be left with a mere code of regulations which cannot rightly be called morality at all."

Once again Clifford stresses the great importance of questioning things, and the great danger that a society where this does not happen sufficiently, for whatever reason, will decline into some form of authoritarian dictatorship.   Text. 

Note 75: "Yet here, in the dim beginning of knowledge, where science and art are one, we find only the same simple rule which applies to the highest and deepest growths of that cosmic Tree; to its loftiest flower-tipped branches as well as to the profoundest of its hidden roots; the rule, namely, that what is stored up and handed down to us is rightly used by those who act as the makers acted, when they stored it up; those who use it to ask further questions, to examine, to investigate; who try honestly and solemnly to find out what is the right way of looking at things and of dealing with them."

Put otherwise, for the nonce in Biblical terms, the rational use of and approach to all traditional belief and practice is as insisted by Thessalonians 5, 21: "Prove all things: hold fast that which is good."    Text.

Note 76: "A question rightly asked is already half answered, said Jacobi; we may add that the method of solution is the other half of the answer,

and that the actual result counts for nothing by the side of these two."

Here are three important points compressed in one statement:

Real science is driven by questions.  The core of real science consists of rational methods to answer

questions. 

Rational methods are in principle far more important than the results reached with them. 

The reason for the last point is that once one has found a rational method to answer a question it can be used to answer many more questions, and does not need genius to do so, but just competence and relevant knowledge.   Text.

Note 77: "The question which required a genius to ask it rightly is answered by a tiro. If Ohm’s law were suddenly lost and forgotten by all men, while the question and the method of solution remained, the result could be rediscovered in an hour. But the result by itself, if known to a people who could not comprehend the value of the question or the means of solving it, would be like a watch in the hands of a savage who could not wind it up, or an iron steamship worked by Spanish engineers."

Here Clifford mentions some of the recent achievements of science of his day such as the telegraph and the "iron steamship" - which 117 years later are outdated and mostly replaced (namely by radio, the internet, airplanes, all invented after Clifford died).

In any case, the points of principle are the central importance to the human cognitive enterprise of trying to improve man's standing and chances in nature by the finding of real natural knowledge of good questions and good methods to answer good questions - and that without sufficient individuals to appreciate and understand the value of good questions or without sufficient individuals capable of (eventually) answering them rationally, there would be no science and no human civilization, but just another kind of ape, characterized by being furless and by its capacity to chatter to others and to seriously and proudly believe all manner of delusions.   Text.

Note 78: "In regard, then, to the sacred tradition of humanity, we learn that it consists, not in propositions or statements which are to be accepted and believed on the authority of the tradition, but in questions rightly asked, in conceptions which enable us to ask further questions, and in methods of answering questions. The value of all these things depends on their being tested day by day."

Here Clifford in fact insists that there are two approached to tradition: The

common one of accepting it at face-value, because it was handed down from posterity by authority, and of practising it without rationally questioning and investigating it; and the scientific one that accepts nothing without critical rational investigation and objective empirical testing.

Unfortunately, it seems that "the sacred tradition of humanity" so far had far more of the first than of the second approach.     Text.

Note 79: "The very sacredness of the precious deposit imposes upon us the duty and the responsibility of testing it, of purifying and enlarging it to the utmost of our power. He who makes use of its results to stifle his own doubts, or to hamper the inquiry of others, is guilty of a sacrilege which centuries shall never be able to blot out."

This again - like some other parts of Clifford's prose - sounds a bit dated and semi-religious. The last was probably on purpose, for Clifford knew very well that those who opposed him would do so - and still do so - "in the name of" some tradition or religion.      Text.

Note 80: "When the labours and questionings of honest and brave men shall have built up the fabric of known truth to a glory which we in this generation can neither hope for nor imagine, in that pure and holy temple he shall have no part nor lot, but his name and his works shall be cast out into the darkness of oblivion for ever."

This seems more sentiment than (possible) fact. In any case: The vast majority of mankind that lived and died did so, as far as the presently living are concerned, anonymously and without being known for anything whatsoever by their posterity. And the very few of earlier generations that are recalled after their death tend not to be scientists but political or religious leaders, whereas the few scientists that are recalled tend to be misunderstood and misconstrued for current purposes, that often have little or nothing to do with their real intents or achievements.   Text.

 

III. THE LIMITS OF INFERENCE

Note 81: "The question in what cases we may believe that which goes beyond our experience, is a very large and delicate one, extending to the whole range of scientific method, and requiring a considerable increase in the application of it before it can be answered with anything approaching to completeness. But one rule, lying on the threshold of the subject, of

extreme simplicity and vast practical importance, may here be touched upon and shortly laid down."

The rule Clifford has in mind will be discussed below, but here it should be remarked that his opening question - "in what cases we may believe that which goes beyond our experience" - is a basic one, and covers many problems of the philosophy of science, such as relates to scientific methodologies; the problem of induction; the questions what characterizes good statistics and what is probability, and more.

Also, he is right that these are difficult questions to answer rationally, and he would have been right had he added that each science has its own methodological problems, while what makes a science into science is a core of tested rational methods to learn from experience and to objectively test, control and where possible and necessary improve and revise any results of these rational methods.

An excellent modern text that contains much relevant knowledge and ideas of these kinds is: Wolfgang Stegmüller: Probleme und Resultate der Wissenschaftstheorie und Analytische Philosophie. (Four thick or some 25 thin volumes. I have been told it has been translated, but never saw the translation, that contains the words "philosophy of science" in the title. Much recommended to anyone interested in rational belief of any kind!)   Text.

Note 82: "A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions. A burnt child dreads the fire, because it believes that the fire will burn it to-day just as it did yesterday; but this belief goes beyond experience, and assumes that the unknown fire of to-day is like the known fire of yesterday. Even the belief that the child was burnt yesterday goes beyond present experience, which contains only the memory of a burning, and not the burning itself; it assumes, therefore, that this memory is trustworthy, although we know that a memory may often be mistaken."

Precisely - the experience we really have is limited to "the specious present", which has an extent of a few seconds at most. And as I pointed put before: There simply is no possibility of testing a theory without predictions which go beyond known experience, nor is a theory any use to guide one's actions if it doesn't go beyond such experiences as one has or remembers.   Text.

Note 83: "The question is not, therefore, "May we believe what goes beyond experience?" for this is involved in the very nature of belief; but "How far and in what manner may we add to our experience in forming our beliefs?" "  

Indeed. I shall below discuss Clifford's - consciously partial and superficial - recommendation, and here refer the interested reader to my On The Logical Principles Of Scientific Explanation.   Text.

Note 84: "And an answer, of utter simplicity and universality, is suggested by the example we have taken: a burnt child dreads the fire. We may go beyond experience by assuming that what we do not know is like what we do know; or, in other words, we may add to our experience on the assumption of a uniformity in nature. What this uniformity precisely is, how we grow in the knowledge of it from generation to generation, these are questions which for the present we lay aside, being content to examine two instances which may serve to make plainer the nature of the rule."  

The principle Clifford proposes is: "We may go beyond experience by assuming that what we do not know is like what we do know; or, in other words, we may add to our experience on the assumption of a uniformity in nature."

Actually, there are somewhat better formulations and motivations. Clifford himself provides a better formulation than "assumption of a uniformity in nature", which is too general and unspecific in many cases, namely "what we do not know is like what we do know", which merely counsels us to rely (rather than not) on whatever we have established by careful reasoning and experimentation.

Next, the kind of principle Clifford has in mind has been formulated several times explicitly, possibly first by the Chinese. Here is a beautiful quotation from Robert Temple's "The genius of China" (that popularizes Joseph Needham's work):

"Isaac Newton formulated his First Law of Motion in the eighteenth century. It stated that 'every body continues in its state of rest, or uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.

Needham's researches have now established that this law was stated in China in the third or fourth centuty BC. We read in the Mo Ching: 'The cessation of motion is due to the opposing force... If there is no opposing force ... the motion will never stop. This is as true as that an ox is not a horse." (p. 161)

Furthermore, Newton's First Law of Motion was closely related to a methodological principle Newton formulated himself as follows below, namely as his Third Rule of Reasoning, as Clifford undoubtedly knew.

Newton's Rules of Reasoning minus his comments are as follows, where it should be realised that in the following quotation Newton meant by "experimental philosophy" what we call "natural science" and that a shorter version of "which admit neither intensifcation nor remission of

degrees" is "which are invariant". Newton added these rules to the second edition of his Principia, in 1714:

Rule I : We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.Rule II : Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same reasons.Rule III : The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intensification nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.Rule IV : In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may be either made more accurate, or liable to exception.

So what Clifford proposes is much like Newton's Rules II to IV, simplified to their common essence.

Finally, I have shown elsewhere these rules can be mostly argued rationally with the help of probability theory, and note here that there is a principle at the bottom of them that can be stated simply thus:

Human beings can learn from experience.

For if they can, they must use such knowledge as they believe they have to find more and to correct what was mistaken - and that they can do so is shown by scientific technology: The very many thousands of human artifacts made with the help of scientific theories, that show these theories are far bettter tools to explain and improve the world than the far less rational or tolerant religious or political creeds.    Text.

Note 85: "But this is the kind of assumption which we are justified in using when we add to our experience. It is an assumption of uniformity in nature, and can only be checked by comparison with many similar assumptions which we have to make in other such cases."

Yes, but as I pointed out in Note 84, it is usually more sensible to make the assumption more specific: What will probably happen is like what mostly happened so far.

Furthermore, the Chinese version I quoted above has the nice feature that it suggests the following form and principle:

Things will continue to happen as they did before, unless there is a reason they don't.  

Hence, if we know of no reason that what has been happening so often before will happen again, then our best guess about what will happen is

that it will happen again.  

Perhaps it is well to also briefly indicate the reasons why this is rational to believe:

First, see Note 84. Next, supposing that theories are attempts to explain features of things in each and any circumstances, to the extent that our theories have been reliable in the past and to the extent that they have good evidence, they may be relied upon to keep working if there are no intervening reasons.  Text.

Note 86: "But is this a true belief (..)? Can it help in the right guidance of human action? Certainly not, if it is accepted on unworthy grounds, and without some understanding of the process by which it is got at. But when this process is taken in as the ground of the belief, it becomes a very serious and practical matter."  

Well, it certainly is a belief that in very many distinct known cases has been true in the past, to the best of our knowledge.

Furthermore, as I pointed out in Note 59, the whole notion of human scientific knowledge of reality, that has produced so much technology, discoveries and inventions that would not exist without it, and that surely shows that mankind has some real knowledge about the real world they are all part of, is based on the possibility of guessing that certain  general statements are true, that represent some real feature(s) of some real thing(s) in general, in all circumstances and at all times, and until we have found evidence this is not so in some circumstances, for some reason.  

And in the end the best argument for the scientific method, for science, and for rational thinking are the very many discoveries and inventions that would not exist without science, and that were wholly beyond the grasp or dreams of all systems of religious faith and all Holy Books supposedly informed by divine infinite knowledge.   Text.

Note 87: "Whereas the acceptance of the spectroscopic method as trustworthy has enriched us not only with new metals, which is a great thing, but with new processes of investigation, which is vastly greater."

This is a point Clifford made before, but which stands repeating: Far more important than actual results, which are always particular, are general rational methods and tools by which new results can be found.   Text.

Note 88: "We find also that men do not, as a rule, forge books and

histories without a special motive; we assume that in this respect men in the past were like men in the present; and we observe that in this case no special motive was present. That is, we add to our experience on the assumption of a uniformity in the characters of men. Because our knowledge of this uniformity is far less complete and exact than our knowledge of that which obtains in physics, inferences of the historical kind are more precarious and less exact than inferences in many other sciences."  

Here we have an application of Clifford's rule - say: "what we do not know is like what we do know" - to the science of history. Actually, we need not make "the assumption of a uniformity in the characters of men", but only need to count or get a good approximate idea of the number of forged histories and of the number of non-forged histories. As a matter of fact, the latter - especially if restricted to such books as have been seriously considered and discussed by historians and other intelligent knowledgeable men - is far greater than the former, and all that remains is to apply Clifford's rule to this to get his conclusion.   Text.

Note 89: "We may, then, add to our experience on the assumption of a uniformity in nature; we may fill in our picture of what is and has been, as experience gives it us, in such a way as to make the whole consistent with this uniformity. And practically demonstrative inference—that which gives us a right to believe in the result of it—is a clear showing that in no other way than by the truth of this result can the uniformity of nature be saved. No evidence, therefore, can justify us in believing the truth of a statement which is contrary to, or outside of, the uniformity of nature."

This is not quite true, and the main reason is that, since Clifford lived, the rise of quantum mechanics has made it necessary to assume that there are real chance processes in nature. Put otherwise: The "assumption of a uniformity in nature" can only be retained in the sense that what remains uniform is a statistical distribution of otherwise principially unpredictable events.   Text.

Note 90: "If our experience is such that it cannot be filled up consistently with uniformity, all we have a right to conclude is that there is something wrong somewhere; but the possibility of inference is taken away; we must rest in our experience, and not go beyond it at all. If an event really happened which was not a part of the uniformity of nature, it would have two properties: no evidence could give the right to believe it to any except those whose actual experience it was; and no inference worthy of belief could be founded upon it at all."  

Again, this is not quite so. What does seem true to me is sketched in Notes 84 - 86, to which I can add the following:

What we seek are adequate explanations of natural things, events and

processes, and to do so we need sufficient experience of what we try to explain to know that we can be more certain than not that quite a few things remain invariable, and can can be predicted and foreseen from a proper interpretation of their past, if this is known and well understood.

Furthermore, to explain anything at all we must have some idea what it may be like, and the only way we can find such an idea is by using our imagination about what we believe we know has happened in nature so far.

Finally, it is a tested and often verified truth that things will continue to happen as they did before unless and until there is a reason they don't, and this truth we may use both to derive and to test predictions, and indeed we normally do and did so even if we are not conscious of this.   Text.

Note 91: "Are we then bound to believe that nature is absolutely and universally uniform? Certainly not; we have no right to believe anything of this kind. The rule only tells us that in forming beliefs which go beyond our experience, we may make the assumption that nature is practically uniform so far as we are concerned. Within the range of human action and verification, we may form, by help of this assumption, actual beliefs; beyond it, only those hypotheses which serve for the more accurate asking of questions."

Yes, here Clifford is again quite right, and argues along the lines of my comments in this section.

Also, his idea that there are "hypotheses which serve for the more accurate asking of questions" is sensible - and indeed one often must make suppositions, see whether these are confirmed, and then take it from there to try to account imaginatively to explain such results as one found. (For more see my On The Logical Principles Of Scientific Explanation.)   Text.

Note 92: "We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know."  

No, not quite, for there is a slight complication: We also know from experience that many things can't continue to do what they did for a long time. Men die eventually; a piece of iron that is bend and bend again eventually breaks; elastic bands remains elastic a long time but then grow brittle, and so on.

But Clifford is right that these facts are also known from experience, and that to suggest that something will end that has gone for some time we

need some evidence to the effect that something like it has ended.   Text.

Note 93: "We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it."  

Precisely - and usually, as men are on average, more to the point: We need not believe a statement of another person, however honest and sincere that person may be, if we have no reason to believe he knows of what he speaks and no reason to believe that he is honest.    Text.  

Note 94: "It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe."

And this is Clifford's dictum plus another very memorable claim that may be restated thus: You have no right to claim any rational belief in cases where you have no right to doubt and investigate, and about cases where you never doubted nor investigated.   Text.