We no longer discuss opinions even; the most we can
attain to is an attitude of mind. In view of the vast variety of phases
in which even man's great ideas have been held, a sense of indifference
among them, a vacuity in all, grows up. Pilate's question, 'What is
truth?' ends all.
"This is the extreme penalty of the heroic sceptical resolve in strong
and constant minds; commonly those who would measure man's large scope
by the gauge of their own ability and experience fall into such
idiosyncrasy as is the fruitful mother of sects, abortive social
schemes, and all the various brood of dwarfed life; but, for most men,
the pressure of life itself, which compels them, like Descartes,
doubting the world, to live as if it were real, corrects their original
method of independence. They find that to use authority is the better
part of wisdom, much as to employ men belongs to practical statecraft;
and they learn the reasonable share of the principle of authority in
life. They accept, for example, the testimony of others in matters of
fact, and their mental results in those subjects with which such men are
conversant, on the ground of a just faith in average human capacity in
its own sphere; and, in particular, they accept provisional opinions,
especially such as are alleged to be verifiable in action, and they put
them to the test.
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