he constant
surveillance of the inquiring intelligence, there will be no
criterion by which to estimate the true and the false, the
important and the trivial. All beliefs that have wide social
sanction, or that chime in with immediate sense impressions,
established individual habits, or social customs will be accepted
with the same indiscriminate hospitality. To common sense
the sun _does_ appear to go round the earth; the stick _does_
appear broken in water. Thus "totally false opinions may
appear to the holder of them to possess all the character of
rationally verifiable truth."

[Footnote 1: "Authority" in this sense of social prestige must
be distinguished from "authority" in the sense of scientific
authority. The acceptance of the authority of the expert is the
acceptance of opinions that we have good reason to believe are
the result of scientific inquiry.]

The dangers and falsities of common-sense judgments are
conditioned not only by expectations and standards fixed by
the social environment, but by one's own personal predilections
and aversions. Recent developments in psychology
have made much of the fact that many of our so-called
reasoned judgments are rationalizations, secondary reasons
found after our initial, primary, and deep-seated emotional
responses have been made. They are the result of emotional
"complexes," fears, expectations, and desires of which we are
not ourselves conscious.[1] It is from these limiting conditions
of personal preference and social environment that scientific
method frees us.

[Footnote 1: "When a party politician is called upon to consider
a new measure, his verdict is largely determined by certain
constant systems of ideas and trends of thought, constituting
what is generally known as 'party bias.' We should describe
these systems in our newly acquired terminology as his 'political
complex.' The complex causes him to take up an attitude toward
the proposed measure which is quite independent of any absolute
merits that the latter may possess. If we argue with our politician,
we shall find that the complex will reinforce in his mind those
arguments which support the view of his party, while it will
infallibly prevent him from realizing the force of the arguments
propounded by the opposite side. Now, it should be observed that
the individual himself is probably quite unaware of this mechanism
in his mind. He fondly imagines that his opinion is formed solely
by the logical