80 BEING AND FACULTIES OF MAN. 



assailed with hazy philosophies propounded by didactic 

 theorists, who seem as industriously engaged against us as if 

 it were one of the highest merits of life to lead us astray. 

 Candour was some protection at one time, and, though it 

 is still indispensable to integrity of judgment, it requires 

 often high and cultivated intelligence along with it to 

 enable us fully to escape deception ; for the world has 

 accepted that mischievous and plausible error that every 

 man is entitled to have his own opinion, and apparently to 

 publicly proclaim and teach it a fallacy before which the 

 whole principles of sound and truthful reasoning are sub- 

 verted, and error endowed with universal licence. Per- 

 haps it may yet avail some reader of these pages to point 

 out that every one is not entitled to have his own opinion, 

 and that those who claim such a right do it at the expense 

 of their truthfulness and accuracy of judgment, and at the 

 peril of all the errors into which they mislead others 

 and are themselves certain to fall ; for we doubt whether 

 those who repeat this popular aphorism about opinion 

 know the difference between an Opinion and a Con- 

 viction. Let us ask then, is every man, or any man, 

 entitled to hold error when he has the option of re- 

 jecting it? Can he free himself of his moral respon- 

 sibility to hold the truth, and nothing but the truth ? 

 But what is Opinion ? Is it truth ? And if it be not 

 truth, is it anything but imtruth falsehood and error ? 

 To show that Opinion is not never is truth let us illus- 

 trate the difference between it and Conviction. When a 

 man looks upon an object before him, such as a tree, for 

 example, he cannot help perceiving that it is a tree he 

 cannot convince himself it is not a tree. Nay, though he 

 deny it to be a tree, his denial will not enable him to 

 believe it is not a tree. Its appearance and self-evidence 

 of what it is will not vary or alter to accommodate his 

 denial or wish to disbelieve it. The tree will continue, 



