Page:Educational Review Volume 23.djvu/41

 contempt or horror upon any contrary opinion; even to scorn “weak and illusive reason,” and to take refuge in the calm satisfaction of a firm and immutable faith. “When an ostrich buries its head in the sand as danger approaches, it very likely takes the happiest course. It hides the danger and then calmly says there is no danger; and if it feels perfectly sure there is none, why should it raise its head to see?” (Peirce.)

Such an attitude is possible only to an intellectual recluse and, to be consistently maintained, must be kept remote from earthly realities. Even when reserved for non-practical considerations, it breaks down under the social impulse; man was not meant to live alone and neither feels, acts, nor thinks alone. A common influence is necessary to fix men’s beliefs alike, and the most expeditious method of producing a consensus of opinion has proved to be that of imposed authority. History is too full of the triumphs and the failures of this method—both equally sad to contemplate—to make it necessary to bring forward illustrations of its procedure. Dogma and manifesto, the trial for heresy and the Index Expurgatorius, the Inquisition and the stake, scholasticism and pedantry, the literalism of the expounders of the Scriptures or of the commentators of Aristotle, the refusal of the orthodox to look thru the telescope to see what they had no authority for observing, or the E pur si muove of Galileo—bring to mind realistically the heroic scenes of the dramas for which the method of authority furnishes the common plot. The limitations of this method are certain to be irritatingly felt by the few, however lightly tolerated by the many. The saving remnant that enjoys a wider outlook, and penetrates the mist with which dogma has enveloped the atmosphere, realizes that infallibility is theoretically an idle dream, and practically an artificial fiction: and in so far as others use their eyes and look in forbidden places, they observe that many of the beliefs of men do not fall under the shadow of the pronunciamento, but thrive in the sunshine of common sense. And if this be true of some opinions, why not of others? Unless doubt and questioning and inquiry on all subjects be utterly suppressed, the error of authority will be suspected, the means whereby a sounder belief may be