{
  "id": "a_dj37ebpm",
  "oid": 165508,
  "revision": 1,
  "revision_oid": 165509,
  "work": "orthodoxy",
  "edition": "pg16769-r1",
  "title": "Tennyson's doubt ends in a stronger faith",
  "anchors": [
    {
      "unit": "CH08.P006",
      "oid": 199,
      "role": null,
      "edition": "pg16769-r1",
      "paragraph": "CH08.P006",
      "exact": "there was faith in their honest doubt",
      "start": 2194,
      "end": 2231,
      "prefix": "ontemporaries when he said that ",
      "suffix": ". There was indeed. Those words ",
      "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH08.P006#char=2194,2231"
    }
  ],
  "body_markdown": "Tennyson's *In Memoriam* (1850) says, 'There lives more faith in honest doubt, / Believe me, than in half the creeds.' In the first-edition transcription inspected here, the passage is canto XCIV. It answers someone who calls doubt diabolical: a morally upright questioner struggles through uncertainty and reaches a stronger faith, accompanied by divine power even in darkness. [Tennyson, canto XCIV](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_(Tennyson)/Canto_94).\n\nChesterton's paraphrase sets up a deliberate change of meaning. Tennyson's faith is the religious confidence that can emerge through questioning; Chesterton's is the supposedly concealed confidence in an unvarying, godless universe. That inversion is an argument about the assumptions of certain doubters, not a reliable account of the poem's conclusion. Restoring the stanza prevents Tennyson himself from being mistaken for a witness endorsing the materialism Chesterton attacks.",
  "sources": [
    {
      "url": "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_(Tennyson)/Canto_94",
      "title": "Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam (1850), canto XCIV",
      "locator": "Lines 1–28, especially lines 11–17 and the final three stanzas",
      "exact": null
    },
    {
      "url": "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_(Tennyson)",
      "title": "In Memoriam, first-edition transcription",
      "locator": "Edition statement and title page: Edward Moxon, London, 1850",
      "exact": null
    }
  ],
  "citations": [],
  "external_references": [
    {
      "url": "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_(Tennyson",
      "title": "Tennyson, canto XCIV"
    }
  ],
  "limits": [
    "The canto locator follows the inspected 1850 first edition; later editions use different numbering."
  ],
  "metadata": {
    "run": "chapter-08-restart-2026-11-07",
    "paragraph_investigator": "P006",
    "task": [
      {
        "approach": "Quotations and attributions",
        "question": "Where did Arnold say that miracles do not happen, and what purpose did that denial serve?"
      },
      {
        "approach": "Quotations and attributions",
        "question": "What happens to Tennyson's honest doubt when its original context is restored?"
      },
      {
        "approach": "Interlocutors and historical debates",
        "question": "What contemporary scientific discussion makes the appeal to modern psychology intelligible, and what does it actually establish?"
      }
    ],
    "model": "gpt-6.1-sol"
  },
  "content_sha256": "sha256:6221298c03478efcd13b4cb6878a184d43ef49f05907ab284c0ad30e5c538031",
  "created_at": "2026-11-07T18:31:03Z",
  "is_current": true,
  "url": "/a/a_dj37ebpm",
  "revision_path": "/a/a_dj37ebpm/r/1",
  "cited_by": [
    {
      "id": "a_rf4hlvbl",
      "revision": 1,
      "title": "The freedom concealed in dogma: orthodoxy as a resource for reform",
      "url": "/a/a_rf4hlvbl"
    }
  ]
}