RELIGION AND SCIENCE. H 



perience common to all mankind, but implies an induction 

 from a great variety of experiences, we may say that it 

 ranks next in certainty to the postulates of exact science. 



Do we not thus arrive at a generalization which may 

 habitually guide us when seeking for the soul of truth in 

 things erroneous? While the foregoing illustration brings 

 clearly home the fact, that in opinions seeming to be abso- 

 lutely and supremely wrong something right is yet to be 

 found; it also indicates the method we should pursue in 

 seeking the something right. This method is to compare 

 all opinions of the same genus; to set aside as more or less 

 discrediting one another those various special and concrete 

 elements in which such opinions disagree; to observe what 

 remains after the discordant constituents have been elimi- 

 nated; and to find for this remaining constituent that ab- 

 stract expression which holds true throughout its divergent 

 modifications. 



§ 3. A candid acceptance of this general principle and 

 an adoption of the course it indicates, will greatly aid us in 

 dealing with those chronic antagonisms by which men are 

 divided. Applying it not only to current ideas with which 

 we are personally unconcerned, but also to our own ideas 

 and those of our opponents, we shall be led to form far more 

 correct judgments. We shall be ever ready to suspect that 

 the convictions we entertain are not wholly right, and that 

 the adverse convictions are not wholly wrong. On the one 

 hand we shall not, in common with the great mass of the 

 unthinking, let our beliefs be determined by the mere acci- 

 dent of birth in a particular age on a particular part of the 

 Earth's surface; and, on the other hand, we shall be saved 

 from that error of entire and contemptuous negation, which 

 is fallen into by most who take up an attitude of independ- 

 ent criticism. 



Of all antagonisms of belief, the oldest, the widest, the 

 most profound and the most important, is that between Ee- 



