One more point, small but important, and our preliminaries are done.
There are two ways of looking at our duty in the matter of
opinion,--ways entirely different, and yet ways about whose difference
the theory of knowledge seems hitherto to have shown very little
concern. _We must know the truth_; and _we must avoid error_,--these
are our first and great commandments as would-be knowers; but they are
not two ways of stating an identical commandment, they are two
separable laws. Although it may indeed happen that when we believe the
truth _A_, we escape {18} as an incidental consequence from believing
the falsehood _B_, it hardly ever happens that by merely disbelieving
_B_ we necessarily believe _A_. We may in escaping _B_ fall into
believing other falsehoods, _C_ or _D_, just as bad as _B_; or we may
escape _B_ by not believing anything at all, not even _A_.
Believe truth! Shun error!--these, we see, are two materially
different laws; and by choosing between them we may end by coloring
differently our whole intellectual life. We may regard the chase for
truth as paramount, and the avoidance of error as secondary; or we may,
on the other hand, treat the avoidance of error as more imperative, and
let truth take its chance. Clifford, in the instructive passage which
I have quoted, exhorts us to the latter course. Believe nothing, he
tells us, keep your mind in suspense forever, rather than by closing it
on insufficient evidence incur the awful risk of believing lies. You,
on the other hand, may think that the risk of being in error is a very
small matter when compared with the blessings of real knowledge, and be
ready to be duped many times in your investigation rather than postpone
indefinitely the chance of guessing true. I myself find it impossible
to go with Clifford. We must remember that these feelings of our duty
about either truth or error are in any case only expressions of our
passional life. Biologically considered, our minds are as ready to
grind out falsehood as veracity, and he who says, "Better go without
belief forever than believe a lie!" merely shows his own preponderant
private horror of becoming a dupe. He may be critical of many of his
desires and fears, but this fear he slavishly obeys. He cannot imagine
any one questioning its binding force. For my own part, I {19} have
also a horror of being duped; but I can believe that worse things than
being duped may happen to a man in this world: so Clifford's
exhortation has to my ears a thoroughly fantastic sound. It is like a
general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle
forever than to risk a single wound. Not so are victories either over
enemies or over nature gained. Our errors are surely not such awfully
solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in
spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier
than this excessive nervousness on their behalf. At any rate, it seems
the fittest thing for the empiricist philosopher.