138 Science diminishes error. 



exact in their movements, by the risk they incur of 

 missing their train. Numerous inventions and pro- 

 cesses based upon scientific discoveries could not be 

 worked at all unless men possessed habits of greater 

 accuracy than formerly. Workmen now require 

 higher moral and intellectual education, and their 

 duties require more intelligence and involve greater 

 responsibility. 



Science diminishes error, and the avoidance of 

 error is a large step towards the attainment of truth. 

 There is no tyranny equal to that of false ideas. 

 Error often produces immoral acts, and every act of 

 immorality is a mental error. " The ignorant justice- 

 loving man, enamoured of the right, is blinded by the 

 speciousness of wrong." " Inaccuracy of thought is 

 the cause not only of the errors we meet with in 

 the sciences, but also of the majority of the offences 

 which are committed in civil life, of unjust quarrels, 

 unfounded law suits, rash counsel, and ill-arranged 

 undertakings. There are few of those which have 

 not their origin in some error, and in some fault of 

 judgment, so that there is no defect which it more 

 concerns us to correct."* 



Our senses and consciousness are often great de- 

 ceivers, and unless corrected by sufficient knowledge, 

 are frequently as great a source of error in moral ques- 

 tions as in mental ones.-(- Their incessant influence 

 is a cause of selfishness, and of the fallacious tendency 

 existing in nearly every man, to exaggerate the im- 

 portance of himself and of everything relating to him. 



* Port Royal Logic, Discourse i. t See p. 9192. 



