Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/13



In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.—Gen. I: 1-5.

One error is usually the parent of a thousand. False premises inevitably lead to false conclusions. A single flaw in the logic of an argument is subversive of the truth of all succeeding statements. A mistake in one figure, at the beginning of a protracted arithmetical calculation will grow into an error of millions in the outcome.

This law is universal. Error will not, in any of its aspects, produce truth. There is only one royal rule for the pursuit of wisdom, and that is to start from facts or propositions which are true. In that case we at least begin aright with a fair prospect of so continuing; while otherwise we begin wrong with a certainty of diverging further and further into error at each succeeding step.