ever to lend the doctrine a respectful ear.

     But please observe, now, that when as empiricists we
give up the doctrine of objective certitude, we do not
thereby give up the quest or hope of truth itself. We still
pin our faith on its existence, and still believe that we
gain an ever better position towards it by systematically
continuing to roll up experiences and think. Our great
difference from the scholastic lies in the way we face. The
strength of his system lies in the principles, the origin,
the <terminus a quo> of his thought; for us the strength is
in the outcome, the upshot, the <terminus ad quem>. Not
where it comes from but what it leads to is to decide. It,
matters not to an empiricist from what quarter an hypothesis
may come to him: he may have acquired it by fair means or by
foul; passion may have whispered or accident suggested it;
but if the total drift of thinking continues to confirm it,
that is what he means b its being true.

     7. Two Different Sorts of Risks in Believing. 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 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 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.

     8. Some Risk Unavoidable. And now, after all this
introduction, let us go straight at our question. I have
said, and now repeat it, that not only as a matter of fact
do we find our passional nature influencing us in our
opinions, but that there are some options between opinions
in which this influence must be regarded both as an
inevitable and as a lawful determinant of our choice.

     I fear here that some of you my hearers will begin to
scent danger, and lend an inhospitable ear. Two first steps
of passion you have indeed had to admit as necessary, -- we
must think so as to avoid dupery, and -- we must think so as
to gain truth; but the surest path to those ideal
consummations, you will probably consider, is from now
onwards to take no further passional step.

     Well, of course, I agree as far as the facts will
allow. Wherever the option between losing truth and gaining
it is not momentous, we can throw the chance of <gaining
truth> away, and at any rate save ourselves from any chance
of <believing falsehood>, by not making up our minds at all
till objective evidence has come. In scientific questions,
this is almost always the case; and even in human affairs in
general, the need of acting is seldom so urgent that a false
belief to act on is better than no belief at all. Law
courts, indeed, have to decide on the best evidence
attainable for the moment, because a judge's duty is to make
law as well as to ascertain it, and (as a learned judge once