With All the Mind . . .

RULES FOR THE DIRECTION OF THE MIND

In this last installment of our series on responsible thinking, to put it one way, we will venture upon a few specific rules for the proper direction of the mind. Our society is becoming so permissive that it is hardly appropriate to talk about rules of any kind. But this is the grand illusion of our age: that we can be indifferent to rules. Rules be hanged, we are resolved to do what we will!

That great English writer whose pen name was Stendahl but whose real name was Henri Beyl was satisfied as an essayist to follow but one rule: “I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all the world crumbles to nothing.” That’s not a bad one for a writer, and woe be to those who have no rules, whatever be their calling. One rule may be adequate if it be of sufficient quality, such as Tennyson’s poetic hope: “Ah, when shall all men’s good be each man’s rule?”

All areas of life depend upon recognized rules, whether it be health, economics, education, politics. No home can long endure when rules are ignored. There are rules to friendship as well as to nuclear physics. As early as 1682 William Penn, writing about government, insisted that a people can be free so long as they are ruled by laws rather than by men.

It should be conceded, therefore, that there are also rules or laws for rational thinking, ami that these laws are as sovereign as any other laws. If they are ignored or violated, they demand a recompense.

There has been at least one great thinker who was convinced that he had discovered a universal and infallible method of reasoning, Rene Descartes, who was a mathematician as well as philosopher. He called his discovery “rules for the direction of the mind,” 21 in number which he spent years devising. Disillusioned with what he learned from teachers, Descartes turned to “the book of the world” in his search for truth. Then he made himself the object of his study. These new sources of investigation revealed the way one’s mind should go. He believed God confirmed his conclusions in a series of dreams during 1619, and he resolved to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Blessed Virgin at Loretto in gratitude for his discovery.

One of the most important of the rules is that the mind should seek to investigate, not what others have said or thought, but only what can be clearly and distinctly determined by an application of the senses, and thus the conclusions drawn will be only those that are certain.

Living near the close of the so-called Dark Ages and at the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, Descartes was calling for a completely new method of study and investigation. The world had too long accepted things as true because Aristotle had taught it. Descartes insisted that things must be seen as they are and that conclusions must be drawn accordingly. At one time the old mathematician was led to doubt everything, even that he was at that moment sitting before the fire, which he presumably was. He might be deceived or dreaming. Resolving that at least one proposition was unquestionably true, I think, he went on to affirm his own existence I think, therefore I am, which is one of the great quotations in the history of ideas. This was his entree to certainty. If he existed, others like him existed moreover, God exists. God’s universe thus became his laboratory, especially the human mind. Man can know for sure by the proper application of mind to God’s creation.

True, some things cannot be known. Never mind. Concentrate upon the thinks that can be clearly and distinctly perceived. Study these as long as necessary. The study may never end, and conclusions are drawn only as the evidence makes them certain. With this rule Descartes was persuaded that he had given the world an entirely new approach to knowledge. He was anticipating the age of science and scientific method, and it was what Alexander Campbell called, in applying this to Biblical studies, “the inductive method of Bible study.”

Campbell was the Descartes of his time, calling a new nation on a new frontier to a new way of looking at Scripture. Rather than build one’s faith upon the theological systems of antiquity, wipe the slate clean and presume to know nothing, the young reformer urged, insisting that the Bible be viewed as a new book and studied with a new method. Interpret it as you would any other literature, he urged, and draw no conclusions except those forced upon you by what is clearly evident. Strength of evidence should determine the degree of faith we have in any proposition, he contended.

Descartes and Campbell thus agree that there is a method of investigation. One is not left to whim, caprice, accident, or tradition. He can be sure by applying the rules for the direction of the mind.

Another such rule given by Descartes was that truth comes by starting with the simple facts, those that are more obviously true, and moving toward the more complex and difficult. The simple truths, once gathered, tend to shed light on the more obscure, and gradually the more difficult also becomes simple. He backed up this rule with another: that all facts should be separated into simple and complex, or what is simply known from what is only supposed. To Descartes this is the great secret of learning: to know what you know and to know what you don’t know. And always keep these separated!

To refer to but one more of his rules, one that would spare us many a woe in our study of the Bible: when you come upon a matter that is clearly beyond the mind’s ability to comprehend with any degree of certainty, stop there and go no further and draw no conclusions.

Descartes would say that discussion on such a matter as the identity of Paul’s thorn in the flesh is mere speculation and therefore foolish and unprofitable. We should place the fact that Paul had such a thorn in the category of the known and the nature of that thorn in the realm of the difficult and obscure. Starting with the simple, we may properly proceed to the obscure. But when it becomes evident that there is no way for us to know what Paul’s thorn was --- positively no way! --- we stop there and go no further. Some things cannot be known, and this applies to more things in the Bible than we usually admit. We love to theologize, speculate, and opinionize, all to no profit. This breeds sects and false standards for unity and fellowship.

These rules, which have long since been accepted by critical thinkers, would liberate us from a lot of our Church of Christisms, which are based upon tradition and what others have said rather than careful conclusions drawn from what is clearly and distinctly set forth in Scripture. We often make opinions tests of fellowship and our own deductions, drawn from obscurities rather than certainties, matters of faith. It is common for us to be influenced as much or even more by what the Bible does not say than what it does say, clearly and distinctly. --- the Editor