Page:The Harveian oration 1906.djvu/16

10 yoke of conformity is upon our necks; and in our minds, as in our bodies, the force of habit becomes irresistible. From our teachers and associates, from our reading, from the social atmosphere about us we catch the beliefs of the day, and they become ingrained—part of our nature. For most of us this happens in the haphazard process we call education, and it goes on just as long as we retain any mental receptivity. It was never better expressed than in the famous lines that occurred to Henry Sidgwick in his sleep :


 * We think so because all other people think so;
 * Or because—or because—after all, we do think so;
 * Or because we were told so, and think we must think so;
 * Or because we once thought so, and think we still think so;
 * Or because, having thought so, we think we will think so.

In departing from any settled opinion or belief, the variation, the change, the break with custom may come gradually; and the way is usually prepared; but the final break is made, as a rule, by some one individual, the masterless man of Kipling’s splendid allegory, who sees with his own eyes, and with an instinct or genius for truth, escapes from the routine in which his fellows live. But he often pays dearly for his boldness. Walter Bagehot tells us that the pain of a new idea is one of the greatest pains to human nature. 'It is, as people say, so upsetting; it makes you think that, after all, your favourite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill-founded; it is certain that till now there w T as no place allotted in your mind to the new and startling inhabitant; and now that it has conquered an entrance, you do not at once see which of your old ideas it will not turn out, with which of them it can be reconciled, and with which it is at essential enmity.’ It is on this account that the man who expresses a new idea is very