John Stuart Mill talks about beliefs that have been “inherited” rather than “adopted.” I think he means something similar to what I said when I said beliefs were more alive and vivid after they have been defended in debate. These are beliefs that are the product of indoctrination. Mill suggests that when a doctrine is inherited
“conversion from one of these doctrines to another, being now an exceptional fact, occupies little place in the thoughts of their professors. Instead of being, as at first, constantly on alert either to defend themselves against the world, or to bring the world over to them, they have subsided into acquiescence, and neither listen, when they can help it, to arguments against their creed, nor trouble to dissentients (if there be such) with arguments in its favour. From this time may usually be dated the decline of the living power of the doctrine.”
If you never have to defend a doctrine it dies dormant inside of you. Debate and discussion, not indoctrination, are keys to keeping a belief alive. The worst thing that can happen to a creed is to have it accepted as gospel truth. That is a death sentence!
Mill returned to the fact that early on in the establishment of a creed no teachers have trouble teaching that creed. Learners find it easy to learn. As Mill wrote,
“We often hear the teachers of all creeds lamenting the difficulty of keeping up in the minds of believers a lively apprehension of the truth of which they nominally recognize, so that it may penetrate the feelings, and acquire a real mastery over the conduct. No such difficulty is complained of while the creed is still fighting for its existence: even the weaker combatants then know and feel what they are fighting for, and the difference between it and other doctrines; and in that period of every creed’s existence, not a few persons may be found, who have realised its fundamental principles in all the forms of thought, have weighed and considered them in all their important bearings, and have experienced the full effect on the character which belief in that creed ought to produce in a mind thoroughly imbued with it. But when it has come to be an hereditary creed, and to be received passively, not actively—when the mind is no longer compelled, in the same degree as at first, to exercise its vital powers on the question which its belief presents to it, there is a progressive tendency to forget all of the belief except the formularies, or to give it a dull and torpid assent, as if accepting it on trust dispensed with the necessity of realising it in consciousness, or testing it by personal experience, until it almost ceases to connect itself at all with the inner life of the human being. Then are seen the cases, so frequent in this age of the world as almost to form the majority, in which the creed remains as it were outside the mind, incrusting it and petrifying it against all other influences addressed to the higher parts of our nature; manifesting its power by not suffering any fresh and living conviction to get in, but itself doing nothing for the mind or heart, except standing sentinel over them to keep them vacant.
From Mill’s perspective it is much better to have a creed in its infancy where is remains a lively belief instead of a dying leaf of a belief. Then Mill gives an astonishing list of beliefs which he believes have been inherited for such a long period of time, that they are no longer lively beliefs at all, but rather dead beliefs.
And one of the examples of such dead beliefs might surprise you. I will deal with them in my next post.