Do we not thus arrive at a generalization which may habitually guide us when seeking for the soul of truth in things erroneous? While the foregoing illustration brings clearly home the fact, that in opinions seeming to be absolutely and supremely wrong something right is yet to be found; it also indicates the method we should pursue in seeking the something right. This method is to compare all opinions of the same genus; to set aside as more or less discrediting one another those various special and concrete elements in which such opinions disagree; to observe what remains after the discordant constituents have been eliminated; and to find for this remaining constituent that abstract expression which holds true throughout its divergent modifications.
§3. A candid acceptance of this general principle and an
adoption of the course it indicates, will greatly aid us in
dealing with those chronic antagonisms by which men are
divided. Applying it not only to current ideas with which
we are personally unconcerned, but also to our own ideas and
those of our opponents, we shall be led to form far more
correct judgments. We shall be ever ready to suspect that
the convictions we entertain are not wholly right, and that
the adverse convictions are not wholly wrong. On the one
hand we shall not, in common with the great mass of the
unthinking, let our beliefs be determined by the mere accident
of birth in a particular age on a particular part of the Earth’s
surface; and, on the other hand, we shall be saved from that
error of entire and contemptuous negation, which is fallen
into by most who take up an 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 commenced when the recognition of the simplest uniformities in surrounding things, set a limit to the previously universal fetishism. It shows itself everywhere throughout the domain of human knowledge: affecting men’s interpretations alike of the simplest mechanical accidents and
