e on his guard against such influences as these, and must
distrust prejudices for or against certain doctrines, when he finds
that he imbibed them at an uncritical age and has remained under their
influence ever since. Some do appear to be able to emancipate
themselves, and to outgrow what they first learned.

It is, as I have said, natural that there should be a tendency to form
"schools" in philosophy. And there are certain things that make this
somewhat uncritical acceptance of a doctrine very attractive.

In the first place, if we are willing to take a system of any sort as a
whole, it saves us a vast amount of trouble. We seem to have a
citadel, a point of vantage from which we can look out upon life and
interpret it. If the house we live in is not in all respects ideal, at
least it is a house, and we are not homeless. There is nothing more
intolerable to most men than the having of no opinions. They will
change one opinion for another, but they will rarely consent to do
without altogether. It is something to have an answer to offer to
those who persist in asking questions; and it is something to have some
sort of ground under one's feet, even if it be not very solid ground.

Again. Man is a social creature, and he is greatly fortified in his
opinions by the consciousness that others share them with him. If we
become adherents of a "school," we have the agreeable consciousness
that we are not walking alone through the maze of speculations that
confronts those who reflect. There appears to be a traveled way in
which we may have some confidence. Are we not following the crowd, or,
at least, a goodly number of the pilgrims who are seeking the same goal
with ourselves? Under such circumstances we are not so often impelled
to inquire anxiously whether we are after all upon the right road. We
assume that we have made no mistake.

Under such circumstances we are apt to forget that there are many such
roads, and that these have been traveled in ages past by troops very
much like our own, who also cherished the hope that they were upon the
one and only highway. In other words, we are apt to forget the lesson
of the history of philosophy. This is a serious mistake.

And what intensifies our danger, if we belong to a school which happens
to be dominant and to have active representatives, is that we get very
little real criticism. The books that we write are usually criticised
by those who view our position