Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/96

 or convention. But this break-away disposition is not necessarily the free play of a reasonable mind. It may be a pugnacious self-assertion of superiority over the accepted thought or faith of others. It is more attractive to fight for one’s own property than for the common good. It is undeniable that a heresy becomes an intellectual property which rouses in its owner a sense of scarcity value and of personal attachment that are liable to lead him into methods of defence which carry stormy emotional bias and may cause him to transgress the bounds of sweet reasonableness. Thus it is difficult to determine at the outset whether a heresy is a genuinely rational product, the logical correction of wrong thinking, or whether it is a more or less plausible attempt to be peculiar, and to feel superior, in one’s thinking. Even when one heresy is followed by others which appear to be its reasonable consequences, the sequence may be inspired by a sub-conscious personal urge towards a system which shall be our property and shall force its way into a newly won authority. How far I have succumbed to these temptations it is not possible for me to know. But as part of my interest as heretic has lain in watching the origins of my beliefs, and in enjoying the humour of the unexpected, as ideas come out of the sub-conscious, I may hope to have escaped some of that dogmatic overconfidence which is the besetting sin of heretics. At any rate, I can formally disclaim the pretence that I have woven my heresies into a complete economic