In other
words, a man's occupying the position of a listener does not
necessarily clothe him with the attributes of a judge, and there may
be as much folly and impertinence in his going about saying, "I do
not agree with Huxley; he has not satisfied me; he will have to
produce more proof than that before I believe in evolution," as in
going about saying, "I know as much about evolution as Huxley and
could give as good a lecture on it as he any day." And yet a good
many people are guilty of the one who would blush at the mere
thought of the other.
Another fertile source of confusion in this and similar
controversies is the habit which transcendentalists, theological and
other, have of using the term "truth" in two different senses, the
scientific sense and the religious or spiritual sense. The
scientific man only uses it in one. Truth to him is something
capable of demonstration by some one of the canons of induction. He
knows nothing of any truth which cannot be proved. The religious
man, on the other hand, and especially the minister, has been bred
in the application of the term to facts of an entirely different
order--that is, to emotions produced by certain beliefs which he
cannot justify by any arguments, and about which to him no argument
is necessary.
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