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.  Superstition, blind obedience to custom, and the other substitutes for a right and independent use of the mind, may accidentally and in some few respects impress good ideas upon persons who are too darkened to accept those ideas on their real merits.  But then superstition itself is the main cause of this very darkness.  To hold error is in so far to foster erroneous ways of thinking on all subjects; is to make the intelligence less and less ready to receive truth in all matters whatever.  Men are made incapable of perceiving the rational defences, and of feeling rational motives, for good habits,—­so far as they are thus incapable,—­by the very errors which we are