Episode 3

Do we not thus arrive at a generalization which may habitually guide uswhen seeking for the soul of truth in things erroneous? While the foregoingillustration brings home the fact that in opinions seeming to be absolutelywrong something right is yet to be found, it also indicates a way of findingthe something right. This way is to compare all opinions of the same genus;to set aside as more or less discrediting one another those special and concreteelements in which such opinions disagree; to observe what remains after thesehave been eliminated; and to find for the remaining constituent that expressionwhich holds true throughout its various disguises. §3. A consistent adoption of the method indicated will greatly aidus in dealing with chronic antagonisms of belief. By applying it not onlyto ideas with which we are unconcerned, but also to our own ideas and thoseof our opponents, we shall be enabled to form more correct judgments. Weshall be led to suspect that our convictions are not wholly right, and thatthe adverse convictions are not wholly wrong. On the one hand, we shall not,in common with the great mass of the unthinking, let our creed be determinedby the mere accident of birth in a particular age on a particular part ofthe Earth's surface, while, on the other hand, we shall be saved from thaterror of entire and contemptuous negation, fallen into by most who take upan attitude of independent criticism.

Of all antagonisms of belief the oldest, the widest, the most profound,and the most important, is that between Religion and Science. It commencedwhen recognition of the commonest uniformities in surrounding things, seta limit to all-pervading superstitions. It shows itself everywhere throughoutthe domain of human knowledge; affecting men's interpretations alike of thesimplest mechanical accidents and the most complex events in the historiesof nations. It has its roots deep down in the diverse habits of thought ofdifferent orders of minds. And the conflicting conceptions of Nature andLife which these diverse habits of thought severally generate, influencefor good or ill the tone of feeling and the daily conduct.

A battle of opinion like this which has been carried on for ages underthe banners of Religion and Science, has generated an animosity fatal toa just estimate of either party by the other. Happily the times display anincreasing catholicity of feeling, which we shall do well to carry as faras our natures permit. In proportion as we love truth more and victory less,we shall become anxious to know what it is which leads our opponents to thinkas they do. We shall begin to suspect that the pertinacity of belief exhibitedby them must result from a perception of something we have not perceived.

And we shall aim to supplement the portion of truth we have found with theportion found by them. Making a rational estimate of human authority, weshall avoid alike the extremes of undue submission and undue rebellion --shall not regard some men's judgments as wholly good and others as whollybad; but shall, contrariwise, lean to the more defensible position that noneare completely right and none are completely wrong. Preserving, as far asmay be, this impartial attitude, let us then contemplate the two sides ofthis great controversy. Keeping guard against the bias of education and shuttingout the whisperings of sectarian feeling, let us consider what are the apriori probabilities in favour of each party. §4. The general principle above illustrated must lead us to anticipatethat the diverse forms of religious belief which have existed and which stillexist, have all a basis in some ultimate fact. Judging by analogy the implicationis, not that any one of them is altogether right, but that in each thereis something right more or less disguised by other things wrong. It may bethat the soul of truth contained in erroneous creeds is extremely unlikemost, if not all, of its several embodiments; and indeed if, as we have goodreason to assume, it is much more abstract than any of them, its unlikenessnecessarily follows. But some essential verity must be looked for. To supposethat these multiform conceptions should be one and all absolutely groundless,discredits too profoundly that average human intelligence from which allour individual intelligences are inherited.

To the presumption that a number of diverse beliefs of the same classhave some common foundation in fact, must in this case be added a furtherpresumption derived from the omnipresence of the beliefs. Religious ideasof one kind or other are almost universal. Grant that among all men who havepassed a certain stage of intellectual development there are found vaguenotions concerning the origin and hidden nature of surrounding things, andthere arises the inference that such notions are necessarily products ofprogressing intelligence. Their endless variety serves but to strengthenthis conclusion: showing as it does a more or less independent genesis --showing how, in different places and times like conditions have led to similartrains of thought, ending in analogous results. A candid examination of theevidence quite negatives the supposition that creeds are priestly inventions.