eaker than the real one, and the
substitution of a weak for a strong defence, where both are to be had,
is not useful but the very opposite.

II. It is true, the objector would probably continue, that there is a
rational defence for all excellences of conduct, as there is for all
that is worthy and fitting in institutions. But the force of a rational
defence lies in the rationality of the man to whom it is proffered. The
arguments which persuade one trained in scientific habits of thought,
only touch persons of the same kind. Character is not all pure reason.
That fitness of things which you pronounce to be the foundation of good
habits, may be borne in upon men, and may speak to them, through other
channels than the syllogism. You assume a community of highly-trained
wranglers and proficient sophisters. The plain fact is that, for the
mass of men, use and wont, rude or gracious symbols, blind custom,
prejudices, superstitions,--however erroneous in themselves, however
inadequate to the conveyance of the best truth,--are the only safe
guardians of the common virtues. In this sense, then, error may have its
usefulness.

A hundred years ago this apology for error was met by those high-minded
and interesting men, the French believers in human perfectibility, with
their characteristic dogma,--of which Rousseau was the ardent
expounder,--that man is born with a clear and unsophisticated spirit,
perfectly able to discern all the simple truths necessary for common
conduct by its own unaided light. His motives are all pure and unselfish
and his intelligence is unclouded, until priests and tyrants mutilate
the one and corrupt the other. We who have the benefit of the historic
method, and have to take into account the medium that surrounds a human
creature the moment it comes into the world, to say nothing of all the
inheritance from the past which it brings within it into the world at
the same moment, cannot take up this ground. We cannot maintain that
everybody is born with light enough to see the rational defences of
things for himself, without the education of institutions. What we do
maintain is--and this is the answer to the plea for error at present
under consideration--that whatever impairs the brightness of such light
as a man has, is not useful but hurtful. Our reply to those who contend
for the usefulness of error on the ground of the comparative impotence
of rationality over ordinary minds, is something of this kind.