COMMON BASIS OF EMPIRICISM AND RATIONALISM I/ 



rank injustice, that the habit of checking up each paragraph of 

 an author with the reflection, &quot;After all, is this true?&quot; is to ensure 

 constant misinterpretation. For interpretation, at any rate, 

 must be historical ; and the mental agility to skip back and forth 

 over the interval of even a century is not human. Even the 

 canons of sound deduction, extra-temporal as their validity may 

 be, can seldom be applied by the critic without a thought as to 

 the scientific atmosphere that may have enveloped and given 

 color to the naked words that remain. The men who find fal 

 lacies in Plato are generally superficial students. No man puts 

 on paper anything approaching a complete record of his thought. 

 For one premise expressed, there are ten that w^riter and reader 

 alike supply from their common fund of assumptions. And the 

 inadequacy of the expression is only magnified when the writer 

 departs from the tradition of his school, correcting the assump 

 tions which both he and his reader have alike regarded as indubi 

 table. For though the need of free and full expression is sensibly 

 increased, the^possibility of real intellectual intercourse is as much 

 diminished. One is tempted to remark that no man ever under 

 stands a philosophical doctrine who has not been previously led 

 to a similar hypothesis in the course of his own reflections. This, 

 at any rate, we may safely say: first, that to discover a formal 

 fallacy in the reasonings of one of the great masters is, generally 

 speaking, equivalent to revealing one s own lack of comprehen 

 sion; and, secondly, that when the existence of the fallacy is 

 fully established it remains probable that the particular line of 

 argument thus demolished has in reality little to do with the 

 acceptance of its conclusion. The really significant errors of 

 the philosophers are upon a far more magnificent scale. They 

 have their sources in peculiar limitations of character and en 

 vironment ; and in their consequences they affect the entire world- 

 view. The well attested fallacy is, rightly regarded, but one 

 surface indication among the many that must be patiently sought 

 out, of vast underlying strata of thought. 



True it is, indeed, that however frankly one may in general 

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