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INTRODUCTION.
Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of
scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the most
part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very gradual
character of our education, we must continually forget, and emancipate
ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set aside old
notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be daily
unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour and anxiety to
acquire.
And this difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in which
progress has gained a strong ascendency over prejudice, and in which
persons and things are, day by day, finding their real level, in lieu of
their conventional value. The same principles which have swept away
traditional abuses, and which are making rapid havoc among the revenues of
sinecurists, and stripping the thin, tawdry veil from attractive
superstitions, are working as actively in literature as in society. The
credulity of one writer, or the partiality of another, finds as powerful a
touchstone and as wholesome a chastisement in the healthy scepticism of a
temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams of conservatism, or the
impostures of pluralist sinecures in the Church. History and tradition,
whether of ancient or comparatively recent times, are subjected to very
different handling from that which the indulgence or credulity of former
ages could allow. Mere statements are jealously watched, and the motives
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