Certitude is not the test of centainty.we have been cock-sure of many things that were not so,if i may quote myself again,property,friendship,and truth have a common root in time. one can not be wrenched from the rocky services into which on has growth for many years without feeling that one is attacked in one’s life. what we most love and revere generally is determined by early associations. i love granite rocks and barberry bushes,no doubt because with them were my earliest joys that reach back through the past eternity of life. but while one’s experience thus makes certain preferences dogmatic for oneself,recognition of how they came to be so leaves one able to see that others,poor souls,may be equally dogmatic about something else. and this again means skepticism.
Not that one’s belief or love does not remain.Not that we would not fight or die for it if important-we all, whether we know it or not,are fighting to make the kind of a world that we should like-but that we have learned to recognize that others will fight or die to make a different world with equal sincerity or belief. deep-seated preferences can not be argued about-you can not argue a man into liking a glass of beer- and therefore,when difference are sufficiently for reaching,we try to kill the other man rather than let him have his way.but that is perfectly consistent with admitting that,so far as appears,his grounds are just as good as ours.
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