A person who takes the trouble to form his own opinions and beliefs will feel that he owes no responsibility to the majority for his conclusions. If he is a genuine lover of truth, if he is inspired by a passion for seeing things as they are and an abhorrence of holding ideas which do not conform to facts, he will be wholly independent of the assent of those around him. When he proceeds to apply his beliefs in the practical conduct of life, the position is different. There are then good reasons why his attitude should be less inflexible. The society in which he is placed is an ancient and composite growth. The people from whom he dissents have not come by their opinions, customs and by a process of mere haphazard.
These opinions and customs all had their origin in a certain real supposed fitness. They have certain depth of root in the lives and a proportion of the existing generation. Their congruity with one another may have come to an end. That is only one side of the truth. The most zealous propagandism cannot penetrate to them. In common language, we speak of a generation as something possessed of a kind of exact unity, with all its parts and members homogenous. Yet, plainly it is not this. It is a whole but a whole in a state of constant flux, its factors and elements are eternally shifting. It is not
A genuine lover of truth will :
