BELIEVING AND KNOWING
What is Believing—psychologically? What does the brain do when it “believes” that is different from what it does when it “knows”?
There is a difference. When you know a thing you don’t have to believe it. There is no effort, and no credit attached, in knowing; but this act of “believing” has long been held as both difficult and worthy.
There seems to be not only a clearly marked distinction between knowing and believing, but a direct incompatibility. It may be said roughly that the less we know the more we believe, and the more we know the less we believe. The credulity of the child, the savage, and the less educated classes in society, is in sharp contrast with the relative incredulity of the adult civilized human, and the more highly educated.
There is a difference also shown in our mental sensations as to a thing believed and a thing known. If a man tells you that grass is red and the sky yellow, you merely think him color blind—It does not anger you nor alter your opinion. If he tells you that two and two make ten, you think him ignorant, weak-minded, but your view is not changed, nor are you enraged by him. But if he contradicts you on some religious dogma you are hurt and angry. Why? As a matter of direct physicho-psychological action, why?
To make a physical comparison, it is like the difference between being pushed against when you stand square on your feet, and pushed when you stand on one leg.
Or again, the thing you know is like something nailed down, or planted and growing; the thing you believe like something held up by main force, and quite likely to be joggled or blown away. “Do not try to shake my faith!” protests the believer. He does not object to your trying to shake his knowledge.
If the new knowledge you bring him is evidently a matter of fact, if his brain rationally perceives that he was wrong about this thing, and you are right, he removes his incorrect idea and establishes the correct one, with no more disagreeable sensation than a little sense of shame:—not that, if he was wise enough to admit ignorance gracefully.
But the new faith you bring him is quite another matter. He hangs on to his old faith as if there was a virtue in the mental attitude of belief—aha! now we are on the track! He has been taught that there is!
We receive knowledge and faith in quite different ways, with quite different emphasis. The child learns—and learns—and learns—every day of his life; learns year after year, as long as his brain is able to receive impressions. This vast mass of knowledge is for the most part received indiscriminately and assorted by the brain after its own fashion.
There are but few departments of knowledge to which we have attached arbitrary ideas of superiority; and those fortunately, are all old ones. Knowledge of “the classics” was once kept in the same box with social standing, if not with orthodoxy; and to this day an error in spelling or grammar will condemn a person far more than entire ignorance of physiology or mechanics. Knowledge is a vast range, an unlimited range, visibly subject to extension; each new peak surmounted showing us many more. We learn, unlearn, and relearn, without much opposition or criticism, so long as our little bunch of specialties is assured—the spelling, for instance.
But when it comes to believing, disbelieving, and rebelieving—that is a different matter. Certain things were given us to believe—in our racial infancy—before we knew much of anything, and were therefore far more capable of believing. These articles of belief were sincerely held to be the most important matters; and they were too; because, if any stronger minded race infant refused to believe them, he was ostracised—or executed. What a man believed, or disbelieved, was the keynote of life—in that interesting race infancy of ours. All the other mental processes were as nothing compared to this. Knowledge? There was none to speak of. Doubt was a crime. Inquiry was the beginning of doubt.
The dogmas inserted did change, though slowly; but their importance in the scheme of life did not change. Whatever else the man might or might not be the first question was, “Art thou a Believer?” And he was. What he believed might be the One Absolute Truth; or one of many contemptible heresies; but he was always a believer.
They began with the helpless little children, and told them as the most important basic truths, whatsoever religious doctrines were current at the time; and renewed this process with every generation until this very day—and are still at it. Many of the most pronounced free-thinkers not only prefer to have their women still “devout,” but insist on putting their children through the old course of instruction.
So, in the course of these unbroken ages; under a combined treatment of rigid “natural selection”—the elimination of the unfit, who were burned or beheaded—and of the heaviest social pressure, in both education and imitation; we have developed in the race mind a special area for “believing” as distinct front knowing. This area is abnormally sensitive because in those long ages behind us, it was the very vital base of life itself. If your Belief was steady and intact, you were permitted to live. If it was in the least degree wavering you were in danger. Is it any wonder we object so automatically to anyone’s trying to “shake our faith?”
The change of the last century in this regard has been not only in the sudden opening up of new fields of knowledge; not only in the adoption of entire new methods in the acquisition of knowledge; not only in the rapid popularization of knowledge; but most of all in a new relation of ideas. We are beginning dimly to grasp something of the real scheme of life; to get our sense of the basic verities from observation of facts. That underlying scheme of life which the brain as an organ hungers for, is now opening to us in the field of ascertained fact.
A broad deep satisfying conception of life may now be gathered from the open book of natural law, both the perception of and the inspiration to right living are to be found there; all matters of calm clear easily held knowledge. When one knows enough to build a working religion on established facts, one does not have so much need of that extra capacity of believing.
You may also believe what you know—but it isn’t necessary.
It will be a wonderful thing for the world when in every mind the beautiful truths of life shall be common knowledge. You may believe in an alleged father you have never seen; but when you live with your father you know him.