CHAPTER XIII

MENTALITY, DIVERS DEGREES

BENJAMIN. Yes, I'll walk with you; as I have often by your leave

Chased the fleeing tints of growing thought,

Which trace the changing pattern

of my life; and you have often encouraged me to challenge your thought, while your eye grew bright as I unravelled all your mind.

ST. VICTOR. For our part let us conform to the rule of the Wise Man, that, what we have learnt without guile, we communicate without stint; since the riches of wisdom are an infinite treasure, commending us to God for gifts not our own.1

BENJAMIN. What are the Degrees of Mentality? ST. VICTOR. They are different ways of opening the mind, or shutting it, to faith and knowledge; or, if you like it, to belief and science. The first degree is that of St. Anselm's, and also of the men of St. Victor as against Abelard: Credo ut intelligam, I believe in order to understand.

The second is Abelard's, which looks like an inversion of the first: Intelligo ut credam, I understand in order to believe.

The third is that of Rationalism, pure and simple: Intelligo ne credam, I understand in order not to believe.

The fourth is that of your acquaintance, who made fun of things divine: Nec intelligo, nec credo,

1 Wisd. 7. 13, 14.

I don't understand, and I don't believe; and I don't want to. Now are those enough?

BENJAMIN. You seem to hint at more degrees.

ST. VICTOR. Two more then! The fifth degree is: Credo, quia absurdum, I believe because the thing is absurd; and there is nothing else to do with it but gulp it down, if interest or passion or fashion prescribes.

The sixth and last for our purpose is that which has been described by St. James: Dæmones credunt et contremiscunt, The demons believe and tremble.

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BENJAMIN. St. Anselm's is not quite clear, but it sounds well enough: "I believe, in order to understand." That of Abelard's though does not sound badly at all: "I understand, in order to believe."

ST. VICTOR. The first degree, "I believe, in order to understand," means taking a high stand from the first, a vantage-ground in matters of intelligence. Belief is the first rule of understanding, in supernatural and in natural affairs alike. In the supernatural life of faith divine, it is the privilege acquired by baptism that, accepting by faith the message which God sends us, we advance to the understanding of so precious a communication. So too, in matters that are natural and civil, belief in what we are told, acceptance of what is handed down to us, has been the privilege and warrant of our civilization. Savages likewise, as far as they have begun life with the capital of tradition, and accepted it by faith from their elders, so far have been saved from the helplessness of being left, each waif and wastrel, to the mercy of his own poor devices.

Faith every one lives by it as a primary condition for moving on, doing or understanding anything; and

that not only the faith of children in their parents, and their implicit belief in teachers, but the faith of people in mature years, who are old enough to know by experience. People in mature age are every day taking one another's word, the word of persons unknown; they put faith in cheques and bonds; faith in the word of agents, ship-captains, train-conductors; and they entrust their lives blankly to unknown chances on the bond of belief, to wit, that others know, mean the right thing, and are capable.

If you will not tolerate the life of faith, because you are deceived sometimes, you will have to go and become a lonely Robinson Crusoe in an island of the Pacific, or a solitary savage, a mere degenerate of the backwoods. As St. Augustine observes in his book on the Utility of Believing: “Auctoritate quidem decipi miserum est, sed certe miserius non moveri, It is a miserable thing to be deceived by authority, but certainly more miserable not to go by it." And, just in the line of St. Anselm's thought, that he believes in order to understand, Theodoret, a Greek Father of six centuries earlier, drove the argument right home. He said: "It is a stupid thing and intolerable that whereas, with the masters of all other arts, knowledge is the attribute of the teacher, and faith that of the learner, it is only in the learning of divine things that a contrary order is followed; and knowledge is exacted of the learner before faith."

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BENJAMIN. They call it Credulity to take what is told you.

ST. VICTOR. They call things by all kinds of names. They call Christianity by the name of traditionalism, conventionalism, romanticism. They ransack the dust-bins of every castaway use or

abuse or notion or theorem which they have been familiar with, and they favour you with a participation in their finds though they need not go far among their leavings and offscourings to find such a thing as credulity. It comes to hand everywhere. For what is credulity? The very word shows you that it has something to do with creed, or belief. But it is the habit of believing in an off-hand sort of way, with the levity of thoughtlessness, and without the guarantee of a sufficient reason for assent or dissent. It is true that any one may be taken off his guard sometimes, and see himself stranded, the victim of falsity or downright falsehood. But it is the habit of the thing that makes the credulous dupe. Now just thirty years ago I read in Nature a statement by Herbert Spencer on Organic Evolution, to the effect and in the express terms, that it was a "Creed." In the thirty years that have elapsed since, there have been well nigh as many revisions of that Creed as there have been years-like the educational programmes of Continental Ministers of Instruction, which have come out at about the rate of one a year. The popular mind knows nothing of the vouchers for so many assertions called Science. But the doctrines are printed and they must be true, until they are shovelled away to make room for contradictory assertions which must be truer, just so long as they are not shoved away too. Meanwhile they who believe in the "Creed" of science, as Spencer called it, implicitly accept whatever is printed and published, however unknown the writers, their characters and motives. All that is credulity. It does not rise to the level of faith or belief-although, if it pretends to be science, what business has it to Ideal with belief or faith at all?

See the function of faith, creed and credulity in

History, which is held to be a science. The stock in trade of all historians is nothing but a vast accumulation of material taken on faith. I don't say that all of them are credulous, at least when they are not on the track of religion and the Church. I only say that the science which they profess goes about finding what others have reported; ascertaining, if possible, that the reporter was trustworthy; and then republishing, or doing the matter up anew. As long as they are honest, and where they mean to be so, they are entirely men of faith. Otherwise, and in all other directions, they are purveyors to wholesale credulity.

As the warrant for faith or belief in human affairs is our ignorance or error, which makes us lean on others and draw on their knowledge, so the warrant for credulity is levity; whereof the Wise Man says: 'Qui cito credit, levis corde est." It is levity of the heart that is the nurse of credulity.

There is a warrant likewise for unbelief or infidelity. It is either the same levity in one's own regard; or it is some practical interest in exploiting other people's ignorance and error. The liveliest source of interest is a restless desire to stave truth off from bearing on morality in life. And, when once a wrong principle has been adopted or credulously accepted, Aristotle's proposition holds with inexorable force: It is impossible, he says, not to reach evil at the end from an error committed at the beginning. Having lost the connection of logic and principle with life, the farther people go the worse they fare; as Shakespeare lays it down:

Things bad begun make themselves strong by ill.

Then minds will persuade themselves that nothing can be believed with the tranquillity of certainty;

1 Ecclus. 19. 4.