The "real" reasons for our beliefs are concealed from ourselves as
well as from others. As we grow up we simply adopt the ideas presented
to us in regard to such matters as religion, family relations,
property, business, our country, and the state. We unconsciously
absorb them from our environment. They are persistently whispered in
our ear by the group in which we happen to live. Moreover, as Mr.
Trotter has pointed out, these judgments, being the product of
suggestion and not of reasoning, have the quality of perfect
obviousness, so that to question them is to the believer
to carry skepticism to an insane degree, and will be met by
contempt, disapproval, or condemnation, according to
the nature of the belief in question. When, therefore, we find
ourselves entertaining an opinion about the basis of which there is
a quality of feeling which tells us that to inquire into it would be
absurd, obviously unnecessary, unprofitable, undesirable, bad form,
or wicked, we may know that that opinion is a nonrational one, and
probably, therefore, founded upon inadequate evidence.
Opinions, on the other hand, which are the result of experience or of
honest reasoning do not have this quality of "primary certitude". I
remember when as a youth I heard a group of business men discussing
the question of the immortality of the soul, I was outraged by the
sentiment of doubt expressed by one of the party. As I look back now I
see that I had at the time no interest in the matter, and certainly no
least argument to urge in favor of the belief in which I had been
reared. But neither my personal indifference to the issue, nor the
fact that I had previously given it no attention, served to prevent an
angry resentment when I heard _my_ ideas questioned.
This spontaneous and loyal support of our preconceptions--this process
of finding "good" reasons to justify our routine beliefs--is known to
modern psychologists as "rationalizing"--clearly only a new name for a
very ancient thing. Our "good" reasons ordinarily have no value in
promoting honest enlightenment, because, no matter how solemnly they
may be marshaled, they are at bottom the result of personal preference
or prejudice, and not of an honest desire to seek or accept new
knowledge.
In our reveries we are frequently engaged in self-justification, for
we cannot bear to think ourselves wrong, and yet have constant
illustrations of our weaknesses and mistakes. So we spend much time
finding fault with circumstances and the conduct of others, and
shifting on to them with great ingenuity the on us of our own failures
and disappointments. _Rationalizing is the self-exculpation which
occurs when we feel ourselves, or our group, accused of
misapprehension or error._
The little word _my_ is the most important one in all human affairs,
and properly to reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom. It has the
same force whether it is _my_ dinner, _my_ dog, and _my_ house,
or _my_ faith, _my_ country, and _my God_. We not only resent the
imputation that our watch is wrong, or our car shabby, but that our
conception of the canals of Mars, of the pronunciation of "Epictetus",
of the medicinal value of salicine, or the date of Sargon I, are
subject to revision.
Philosophers, scholars, and men of science exhibit a common
sensitiveness in all decisions in which their _amour propre_ is
involved. Thousands of argumentative works have been written to vent a
grudge. However stately their reasoning, it may be nothing but
rationalizing, stimulated by the most commonplace of all motives.
A history of philosophy and theology could be written in terms of
grouches, wounded pride, and aversions, and it would be far more
instructive than the usual treatments of these themes. Sometimes,
under Providence, the lowly impulse of resentment leads to great
achievements. Milton wrote his treatise on divorce as a result of his
troubles with his seventeen-year-old wife, and when he was accused of
being the leading spirit in a new sect, the Divorcers, he wrote his
noble _Areopagitica_ to prove his right to say what he thought fit,
and incidentally to establish the advantage of a free press in the
promotion of Truth.