HERBERT SPENCER 201 



a competition. It was scarcely a fair one, for 

 my flies, made by myself without practice, were, 

 of course, ill-made, and the bungling make of 

 them introduced an irrelevant factor into the 

 competition. Notwithstanding -this, however, 

 fishing from the same boat we came back ties ; 

 showing that the local flies had no advantage. 



* I may add here that in subsequent years I 

 systematically tested this current belief in local 

 flies ; and on various lochs and four different 

 rivers found it baseless. This experience fur- 

 nished me with a good illustration of the 

 uncritical habits of thought characteristic, not 

 of the common people only, but of those who 

 have received University educations. For in 

 every case I have found highly cultivated men 

 professors and others such accepting without 

 hesitation the dogmas of keepers and gillies 

 concerning the flies of the river. Always their 

 assigned reason is that these dogmas express 

 the results of experience. 



' But inquiry would show that those who utter 

 them have never established them by com- 

 parisons of numerical results. They simply 

 repeat, and act upon, what they have been told 

 by their predecessors ; never dreaming of 

 methodically testing their predecessors' state- 

 ments by trying, whether, all other things being 



