252 The Ethics of Opinion. 
depend for progression in abstract opinions. So varied and so 
rare, even among philosophers, are the conditions requisite to 
enable them to become discoverers of truth and exposers of 
error for their generation. 
I confess that I should be fairly liable to the charge of 
presumption were I to pretend to intellectual qualifications 
superior to those of my neighbours for the study of mental 
and moral philosophy ; but when I state that for so much 
aptitude as I may have, I am conscious of deserving no 
credit whatever, I trust that I may stand acquitted of undue 
egotism and impertinence. The principal advantages which 
I conceive myself to possess for such investigations, are, a 
positive defect of memory which few will envy, but by 
which, happily, I am partially relieved from the incubus of 
prejudice ; a profound conviction of the supreme importance 
of the subject, and a determination to pursue consistently 
the principle stated by Mr. John Stuart Mill in his late 
“ Inaugural Address,” pp. 32, 33. He there says that we 
_ learn from the ancient dialecticians, “To question all things ; 
“never to turn away from any difficulty ; to accept no doc- 
“trine either from ourselves or from other people without a 
“rigid scrutiny by negative criticism, letting no fallacy or 
“incoherence, or confusion of thought, slip by unperceived ; 
“above all, to insist upon having the meaning of a word. 
“clearly understood before using it, and the meaning of a 
“proposition before assenting to it.” I would that I could 
invariably fulfil this rule. 
I consider that the transcendent importance of consistency 
is even greater in thought and opinion, than in physical 
science ; In consequence of our greater liability to imbibe, 
and the far greater difficulty of escaping from fallacies of 
that description ; and having lately stumbled in Frazer's 
Magazine upon some passages which appear to me to be 
wholly inconsistent with the general principles enunciated 
and forcibly illustrated in the same entertaining and instruc- 
tive article, and also to furnish an unusually favourable 
opportunity of exposing their inconsistency and the fallacy 
upon which they appear to me to be based ; I seize the occa- 
sion presented, not only of doing so, but at the same time of 
paying a deserved tribute to the general enlightened 
cosmopolitanism of the author.* 
* See Frazer's Magazine, March 1867, pp. 316—329. ‘Concerning the 
“Treatment of those who differ from us in Opinion.”—By ‘ A.K.H.B.” 
