Page:Religion in the Making.djvu/132

 make-up of an individual mind is concerned, there is a proportion in truth as well as in art.

Thus an ill-balanced zeal for the propagation of dogma bears witness to a certain coarseness of aesthetic sensitiveness. It shows a strain of indifference — due perhaps to arrogance, perhaps to rashness, perhaps to mere ignorance — a strain of indifference to the fact that others may require a proportion of formulation different from that suitable for ourselves. Perhaps our pet dogmas require correction: they may even be wrong.

The fate of a word has to the historian the value of a document. The modern unfavourable implications of the kindred words, dogma, dogmatic, dogmatist, tell the story of some failure in habits of thought. The word “dogma” originally means an “opinion,” and thence more especially a “philosophic opinion.” Thus, for example, the Greek physician, Galen, uses the phrase “dogmatic physicians” to mean “physicians who guide themselves by general principles” — surely a praiseworthy