DIFFICULTIES IN SEARCHING FOR TRUTH. 655 



EDUCATION. 



DIFFICULTIES IN SEARCHING FOR TRUTH. 



PROF. S. H. TROWBRIDGE. 



There is no end of theories upon all questions now vexing the public mind, 

 — whether scientific, theological, social, political, or what not, — and he who can- 

 not find among this maze of wisdom and unwisdom, plausibility and absurdity, a 

 a doctrine to please him must be very hard to suit. The chief trouble is, the 

 majority are pleased with too many of them. No mountebank can proclaim views 

 so wild and absurd as to be without followers. Most men allow others to think 

 for them. They simply absorb like a sponge, and, Hke it, as readily give up 

 what they have taken in when squeezed a little by the next theorist. The "peo- 

 ple" who "do not consider," and who "are destroyed for lack of knowledge," 

 are as universal as the human race, and the persistence of this trait has not less 

 weight than some others urged in proving that the race is one. They who live 

 '"to tell or to hear some new thing" are not dead yet, and do not all live in 

 Athens. 



But a doctrine is not to be condemned because it is new, or to receive un- 

 questioning acceptance because it is old. The Ptolemaic system of astronomy 

 was fully believed in for a score of centuries, and afterwards found to be falla- 

 cious ; and we know not how many accepted theories of the present day will be 

 swept away with the advancing floods of intellectual progress. The question of 

 a true philosopher is not whether the doctrine is musty and discolored with age, 

 or is young and uiitried as the new-born babe ; but whether it is true. 



A most important desideratum to an investigator is a disposition to see both 

 and all sides of a question with equal candor. An unbiased mind, which searches 

 alone for truth^ is the only one qualified to investigate with success or safety. If 

 one begins with preconceived opinions, he is almost sure to become a special 

 pleader in favor of the notions he most desires to establish. With a theory to 

 prove, especially if he has expressed it with any considerable positiveness, he 

 must have virtue almost super-human to give equal weight to arguments for and 

 against it. Men are naturally so averse to any intimation that they have ever 

 made a mistake, or failed to see through and through a thing at first sight, that a 

 change of views is, to many, a confession of weakness or ignorance. Owing to 

 this prevailing weakness of human nature, — which is a far more serious malady 

 than the fallibiHty it is designed to conceal, — it is extremely wise to withhold any 

 positive expression of opinion upon a debatable or much debated question upon 

 which one wishes to reach the highest truth. Of course, one must have a work- 



