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Updated: September 24, 2025
He is no more responsible for what he believes or disbelieves than for the color of his eyes or the place of birth. He may deceive the world with a false profession of faith, but can deceive neither God nor himself. The mind of even the worst of men is a court in which every cause is tried with rigid impartiality, with absolute honesty.
For he governs his assent right, and places it as he should, who, in any case or matter whatsoever, believes or disbelieves according as reason directs him. He that doth otherwise, transgresses against his own light, and misuses those faculties which were given him to no other end, but to search and follow the clearer evidence and greater probability.
Accordingly the first duty of an expositor in stating a theory in which he disbelieves is to exhibit it as logical. It is not there where his trouble lies. Let me summarise the previously stated objections to this theory of nature.
"My brother disbelieves in the constitutionality of this war, and denies that we have any right to take away other people's slaves," said Arabella loftily. "I s'pose he's a right to his opinions." "A poor excuse's better'n none," retorted Maria. "I noticed that he didn't turn out last Summer to keep John Morgan from stealing our people's horses, and robbing their stores and houses.
Van Mons, in his treatise on pears and apples, shows how utterly he disbelieves that the several sorts, for instance a Ribston-pippin or Codlin-apple, could ever have proceeded from the seeds of the same tree. Innumerable other examples could be given.
He might, of course, turn from the invisible world to the world of sense, to nature. But the first result of this is to make man realise that he is separate from nature, and again he fails to find support. He is an alien in the world of nature, and disbelieves the existence of a higher world.
He was too genuine a sceptic to sacrifice peace to the hopeless search for truth. One of the most striking passages in his Essays is an attack upon 'perfectibility. He utterly disbelieves that progress in knowledge will improve morals or diminish war, or cure any of the evils that flesh is heir to. Such a man is not of the material of which enthusiastic reformers are made.
This great system, as opposed to Christianity, can all be summed up under the one word infidelity. Infidel signifies "a heathen; one who disbelieves in Christ, or the divine origin and authority of Christianity." Webster. This system was positively an antichristian power that sought by every possible means to destroy the religion of Jesus and to blot out his very name. It failed in the attempt.
There were limits to the patience of Elisabeth. "Well, how women can listen to bosh of that kind I can not imagine! What can it matter to you what he disbelieves or why he disbelieves it? And it is beastly cheek of him to suppose that it can." "But he is right in supposing it, and it does matter to me. I like to know how old-fashioned truths accord or do not accord with modern phases of thought."
We mean now, generally, by a hypocrite, a man who pretends to be one thing, while he is another; who pretends to be pious and good, while he is leading a profligate life in secret; who pretends to believe certain doctrines, while at heart he disbelieves them; a man, in short, who is a scoundrel, and knows it; but who does not intend others to know it: who deceives others, but does not deceive himself.
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