Origin of Thought

Appendix 18. (925)

Most common errors, it would seem, depend upon habitual judgments formed almost involuntarily and irresistibly by the mass of people. Judgments become habitual because experience indicates an almost constant connection between the inability of ordinary people to take note of infrequent exceptions and their tendency to judge immediately; they pass from ''often' to ''always' in their judgments without suspending judgment when necessary. For example, everyone said that the sun moved around the earth, although the eye told us nothing of the real movement of the sun. People as a whole made a judgment on the basis of their sight-sensation and would have avoided error if they had not made the judgment. But could the judgment be suspended when universal experience showed the apparent movement of the sun to be accompanied by real movement? Experience did indeed show various anomalies, some of which are available to everybody's experience as, for instance, when we see, from a fast sailing boat, what appears to be moving sea. But individual examples are powerless to help the mass of people suspend their judgment. When people as a whole are ready to make certain kinds of conclusions, to urge them to suspend their judgment is like trying to prevent an avalanche on a mountain - you may foresee it, but you will be unable to stop it. Only after centuries are such judgments amended. First, some extraordinary person shows that they are wrong, only to be eliminated for his pains by public opinion. But his martyrdom does not sweep away what he has discovered. The grain of truth gradually forces its way to the surface and flourishes when humankind comes finally to realise its errors and repent of the injury inflicted on the truth and on those who uphold it.