272 HUMANISM 



XV 



exception. Thus persecution becomes a duty and tolerance 

 a crime. 



Common Sense, of course, would be the first to shrink 

 with horror from the consequences of its own doctrine. 

 For, unlike philosophy, it will never press logic to 

 absurdity. It will decline, therefore, to take the claim 

 to infallibility with such tragic earnestness in practice. It 

 will much prefer to point out that while no doubt it is 

 imperative to believe that absolute truth exists, it would 

 be decidedly presumptuous to suppose that any one had 

 got it. In fact there is no very urgent necessity to regard 

 absolute truth as anything but an ideal. In practice no 

 one can really work with it. Not only does it lead to 

 endless quarrels when different men all claim to be 

 absolutely right, but even the same man entangles himself 

 by enunciating incompatible truths with equal absoluteness 

 at different times. And so it will finally be suggested that 

 perhaps this inconvenient infallibility had better be dropped, 

 and even smile approval on a paradoxical philosopher who, 

 perceiving the awkwardness of the situation, comes forward 

 with proposals to attenuate its virulence by contending 

 that though every judgment any one makes is necessarily 

 infallible for the time being, yet there is nothing in this 

 to prevent any one from superseding and annulling his 

 infallible judgment by another equally infallible, and as 

 shortlived, the moment after. 1 



It is clear, however, that reluctance to follow out the 

 logical consequences of an unpalatable doctrine is not 

 strictly the right way to atone for its initial ferocity. 

 It is far more consistent to interpret absolute truth 

 absolutistically than to draw its fangs in such a lax and 

 easy-going democratic way. It will never do to let 

 common sense steer us straight into scepticism, by sur 

 rendering the belief that some one must have absolute 

 truth. If, we should argue, absolute truth exists, it is 

 clear, no doubt, that the common man has not got it. 



1 Such is actually the purport of Mr. F. H. Bradley s doctrine of the in 

 fallibility of the last judgment (cf. Mind, N.S. , No. 66, and my comments in No. 

 67- PP- 373-6). 



