Dare to be wise

"DARE TO BE WISE

At the other end of the world is a University' which has adopted for its own the motto which best expresses the nature of a University : Sapere Aude. It is of the duty laid on our Society to follow this injunction that I wish to speak.

Our object is to promote discussion upon religion, philosophy, and art. And in discussing religion and philosophy there is a special significance in the

command, Dare to be wise. In seeking truth of all sorts many virtues are needed, industry, patience, humility, magnanimity. And courage also is often

needed in the search, since the observer of nature must often risk his life in his observations. But there is another need for courage when we approach religion and philosophy.

And this need comes from the tremendous effect on our own welfare, and the welfare of our fellow beings, of those aspects of reality with which religion and philosophy are concerned. This effect is, in the first place, a characteristic of that reality, the problems about  which would usually be called religious. But it spreads to all philosophy, for there is, I think, no question in philosophy not even among those which border closest on logic or on science of which we can be sure before- hand that its solution will have no effect on the problems of religion.

The profound importance to our welfare of the truth on these questions involves that our beliefs about those truths will also have a great importance for our welfare.
If our lives would gain enormously in value if a certain doctrine were true, and would lose enormously'in value if it were false, then a belief that it is true will naturally make us happy, and a belief that it is false make us
miserable. And happiness and misery have much to- do with welfare.

The practical importance to our lives of these matters has not always been sufficiently recognised of late years. This error is due, I think, to excessive reaction from two errors on the other side.

The first of these errors is the assertion that, if certain views on religious matters were true, all morality would lose its validity. From this, of course, it would follow that all persons who believed those views and yet
accepted morality would be acting illogically and foolishly. That this view is erroneous seems to me quite clear. Our views on religious questions may affect some of the details of morality the observance of a particular day of rest, or the use of wine or of beef, for  example. But they are quite powerless either to obliterate the difference between right and wrong, or to
change our views on much of the content of morality.
At least, I do not know of any view maintained by any-one on any religious question which would, if I held it, alter my present belief that it is right to give water to a thirsty dog, and wrong to commit piracy or to cheat at
cards.

Another form of this same error is the assertion that certain beliefs on religious matters, though they might not render morality absurd, would in practice prevent those who accepted them from pursuing virtue per-
sistently and enthusiastically. This view seems refuted by experience, which, I think, tells us that the zeal for virtue shown by various men, while it varies much, and for many causes, does not vary according to their views
on religious matters. The men who believe, for example, in God, or immortality, or optimism, seem to be neither better nor worse morally than those who disbelieve in them.

The second error is the view that certain beliefs on religious matters would destroy the value, for those who accepted the beliefs, of many of those parts of experience which would otherwise have the highest value.
Tennyson, for example, maintained that disbelief in immortality would destroy the value of love, even while life lasted :

And love would answer with a sigh,
The sound of that forgetful shore
Will change my sweetness more and more,
Half-dead to know that I shall die. 1

Here, again, it seems to me, there is certainly error. Our views as to the ultimate nature and destiny of the  universe may affect our judgments as to the generality  of certain forms of good, or as to their duration, or as to
the possibility of their increase in intensity hereafter.
But I do not see how they can affect our judgment of the goodness of these good things, as we find them here and now. Indeed, if we do not start with the certainty thatlove for an hour on earth is unconditionally good, I do
not see what ground we should have for believing that
it would be good for an eternity in heaven.

These views, then, I admit to be errors, and those do well who reject them as errors. But the reaction from them, as I said, goes sometimes too far, and leads to a denial of the practical importance of the problems of religion. And this is, again, a great mistake. Whatever may be the true answer to the problems of religion, good will be different from bad, and right from wrong,
and much of what we do and feel in this present life will be good, and much will be bad. But if we ask how much good exists in the universe and how much bad ;

if we ask if the main current of the universe is for right, or for wrong, or indifferent to both ; if we ask what is the eventual destiny of the universe or of ourselves all these questions must be answered one way or the other
according to the solution we adopt of religious problems, and of those problems of philosophy which bear on religion. Are there any questions which affect our welfare more than these? It is true that what primarily affects our welfare is the truth on these matters, and not our knowledge of the truth. But a belief that things are well with the world brings happiness, a belief that things are ill with the world brings misery. And this involves the intense practical importance of our beliefs on the problems of religion.