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 positions sympathetically, and who are more inclined to praise than to blame.  He who looks back upon the past is struck with the fact that books which have been lauded to the skies in one age have often been subjected to searching criticism and to a good deal of condemnation in the next.  Something very like this is to be expected of books written in our own time.  It is, however, a pity that we should have to wait so long for impartial criticism.

This leads me to say a word of the reviews which fill our philosophical journals, and which we must read, for it is impossible to read all the books that come out, and yet we wish to know something about them.

To the novice it is something of a surprise to find that books by men whom he knows to be eminent for their ingenuity and their learning are condemned in very offhand fashion by quite young men, who as yet have attained to little learning and to no eminence at all.  One sometimes is tempted to wonder that men admittedly remarkable should have fathered such poor productions as we are given to understand them to be, and should have offered them to a public that has a right to be indignant.

Now, there can be no doubt that, in philosophy, a cat has the right to look at a king, and has also a right to point out his misdoings, if such there be.  But it seems just to indicate that, in this matter, certain cautions should be observed.

If a great man has been guilty of an error in reasoning, there is no reason why it should not be pointed out by any one who is capable of detecting it.  The authority of the critic is a matter of no moment where the evidence is given.  In such a case, we take a suggestion and we do the criticising for ourselves.  But where the evidence is not given, where the justice of the criticism is not proved, the case is different.  Here we must take into consideration the authority of the critic, and, if we follow him at all, we must follow him blindly.  Is it safe to do this?