332 HUMANISM xvn 



best by remaining as they are. They were never intended 

 to be verified or investigated, and if they could be made 

 scientifically valuable they would cease to be so emotion 

 ally, and would no longer serve to surround terrestrial 

 existence with the foil which enhances its brilliancy. And 

 instead of being the victims of an unkind fate which baffles 

 our desire to know, we are ourselves the agency which 

 keeps us ignorant. 



It is as little true here as in any other matters of 

 scientific inquiry that we are confronted with an inscrutable 

 universe whose nature we were never intended to discover. 

 It is true, here as elsewhere, that society entertains a 

 fierce fear of knowledge, a savage suspicion that to eat 

 of the fruits of the tree of knowledge is a sin deserving 

 of death, which thousands of years of contrary experience 

 have done but little to eradicate. Social control of the 

 scientific instinct, the desire to know, is as real, and 

 almost as stringent, as formerly, 1 even though in respect 

 to a few favoured subjects of research, which are supposed 

 to lead to materially useful results, it has been sufficiently 

 relaxed to enable them to rise above the dense atmosphere 

 of social intolerance which is continually being exhaled 

 by our constitutional indolence and dislike of any re 

 adjustment of our habits and actions. 



But in all other subjects the social atmosphere makes 

 all the difference between success and failure, as the 

 individual consciously or unconsciously breathes in its 

 subtle influence. We fancy ourselves exceedingly en 

 lightened and tolerant because we have (though only 

 for a couple of hundred years) given up the sport of 

 witch-baiting, and no longer regard all forms of scientific 

 curiosity as black magic to be checked by summary 

 and premature cremation. But, even as there are many 

 ways of killing a dog other than hanging him, so there 

 are many subtler and more effective ways of producing 

 conformity to social sentiment other than overt persecu 

 tion, and the social factor in the discovery and recognition 

 of truth remains of paramount importance. Truths which 



1 Cp. pp. 58-60. 



