ERROR AND FALLACIES 327 



already old. Above all, we want to make a name ; and so our zeal for the truth 

 is gradually replaced by anxiety to embrace up-to-date opinions, or to attract 

 attention by the fearlessness of our views and the brilliancy of our writings. 

 We criticize our adversaries and are glad if we can make them contradict them 

 selves ; we controvert their arguments and build up elaborate demonstrations 

 of oar own : and we take greater delight in all this than in the discovery and 

 possession of the truth. But in all this we are showing a greater love for our 

 own views, for our own selves and interests, than for truth : and, as St. Augustine 

 well says, he that does not love the truth will not find it : Sapientia et veritas 

 nisi totis animi viribus concupiscatur, nullo modo inveniri poterit .&quot; * 



He who has a disinterested love for truth will prize it more highly than 

 originality. &quot;A great man,&quot; says M. Emile Boutroux, 2 &quot; will not aim at being 

 novel or original, but at finding out the truth.&quot; He will discuss, but in order 

 to prepare the way for the truth, not to assert his own superiority : according 

 to the admirable sentence of St. Ignatius, Rationes modeste afferantur eo 

 animo ut suus veritati sit locus, non ut in ea re superiores inveniantur. 



When such a one sets himself to examine a system of philosophy he will 

 try to get at the author s point of view, and to enter into the latter s thoughts ; 

 he will not engage in a mere search for weak points, with the unworthy idea that 

 the more he disparages others the more renown he will win for himself. Instead 

 of revelling in an author s apparent inconsistencies, he will examine the latter s 

 views with a ready impartiality, and try to reconcile them, remembering that 

 every error contains a soul of truth of which it is a perversion or exaggeration. 

 Such criticism will be invaluable to himself, as a test whereby to control his 

 own personal convictions. 



At the same time, there is the opposite extreme to be avoided : impartiality 

 is not indifference. He is no lover of truth who admits indiscriminately all sorts 

 of opinions, who affects to regard them from a superior height with a conde 

 scending sort of sceptical curiosity, as if they had all the same value for the in 

 dividual and the same significance for society. Whether the indifference of the 

 dilettante springs from pride or from sloth, it is a betrayal of truth and a crime 

 against reason. Love of truth is hatred of error. We cannot embrace the 

 former without condemning the latter. An easy toleration of all sorts of con 

 flicting opinions in regard to religion and philosophy, is not unfrequently re 

 garded in our own day as the hall-mark of enlightenment and broadmindedness, 

 whereas it is in truth a mark of mental imbecility, or intellectual indolence. 



(d] NON CAUSA PRO CAUSA, OR &quot; FALSE CAUSE&quot;. By causa 

 (ainov) Aristotle here meant not a cause in the ordinary sense 

 of causa essendi, but a reason, a causa cognoscendi. The fallacy 

 consists in assigning as a reason for some conclusion a pro 

 position which is really irrelevant to that conclusion. Aristotle 

 contemplated especially cases in which this occurred in the 



1 H. JOLY, Nouveau cours de Philosophic. Logique, pp. 312-13. For instructive 

 views on the same subject, cf. BALMES, Art d arriver au vrai, chap, xxii ; OLLE LAP- 

 RUNE, De la certitude morale ; La philosophic et le temps present ; Les sources de 

 la paix intellectuelle. 



*tudes d histoire et de la philosophic, p. 8. 



