r's
voice as the voice of a real master of life when he hears that voice,
or--apart from metaphor--that he is able to be sure what revelation of
a divine life, not {105} his own, is the true one when he happens to
get it. But religion is not alone in this paradoxical pride of
humility. Science and common-sense alike involve a similar admission
of the depths of our human fallibility and ignorance, on the one hand,
and an analogous assurance that, despite this our fragmentariness of
experience, despite our liability to be deceived, we nevertheless can
recognise truth when experience once has not wholly verified it, but
has sufficiently helped us to get it. For, as individuals, we are
constantly confident beyond what our present experience, taken by
itself, clearly reveals to us. We, for instance, trust our individual
memory in the single case, while admitting its pervasive fallibility
in general. We persistently view ourselves as in reasonably close
touch with the general and common results of human experience, even at
the moment when we have to admit how little we know about the mind or
the experience of any one fellow-man, even our nearest friend. We say
that some of our opinions, for instance, are warranted by the
common-sense of mankind. That is, we pretend once for all to know a
good deal about what the common experience of mankind is. And yet, if
we look closer, we see that we do not directly see or experience the
genuine inner life of any one of mankind except the private self which
each one of us regards as his own, while, if we still further consider
the matter, we can readily observe how little each one of us really
knows even about himself. When {106} we appeal then to what we call
common-sense, we pretend to know what it is that, as we say, the mind
of mankind finds to be true. But if we are asked to estimate the real
state of mind of any individual man, how mysterious that state is! In
brief, the paradox of feeling confidence in our own judgment, even
while regarding all human opinion as profoundly fallible, is not
merely a religious paradox, but also pervades our whole social and
personal and even our scientific types of opinion. Not to have what is
called a reasonable confidence in our own individual opinions is the
mark of a weakling. But usually, if our personal opinions relate to
important matters, they bring us into more or less serious conflict
with at least some of the opinions of other men. Conflict i