orce of the general consent of
those with whom they dwell. There may be other non-rational causes of
belief, but these are the principal and more universal. And when we say
they are non-rational causes, we do not mean that they are
non-reasonable or unreasonable. They provide such a generally
trustworthy, though occasionally fallible, method of getting at truth,
as is sufficient and possible for the practical needs of life--social,
moral, and religious. There is an inborn instinct to think as the crowd
does and to be swayed by the confident voice of authority. If at times
it fail of its end, as do other instincts, yet it is so trustworthy in
the main that to resist it in ordinary conditions is always imprudent.
That our eyes sometimes deceive us would not justify us in always
distrusting their evidence. If a child is deceived through instinctively
trusting the word of its parents, the blame of its error rests with
them, not with it. And so, whatever error the many are led into by
obeying the instinct of submission to authority or to general consent,
is their misfortune, not their fault. Of course there are higher
criteria by which the general consent and the opinion of experts can be
criticized and modified; but such criticism is not obligatory on the
many who have neither leisure nor competence for the task. For here, as
elsewhere, a certain diversity of gifts results in a natural division of
labour in human society; those who have, giving to those who have not;
some ministering spiritual, others temporal benefits to their
neighbours. Not that a man can save another's soul for him any more than
he can eat his dinner for him, but he can minister to him better food or
worse.

The Mussulman child, then, may be bound, during his intellectual
minority, to accept the religious teaching of its parents, just as is
the Christian child. That one, in obeying this natural but fallible
rule, is led into error, the other into, truth, only verifies the
principle that right faith is a gift of God,--a grace, a bit of good
fortune. None of those who are not professedly teachers of religion and
experts, can be morally bound to a criticism above their competence, or
to more than an obedience to those ordinary causes of assent to whose
influence they are subjected by their circumstances. The ideal of a
Catholic religion is to provide, by means of a divinely guided body of
authorities and experts, an universal, international, inter-racial