The pursuit of knowledge is not the same, however, as scrupulous avoidance of error. He who strives to do his own thinking must accept responsibility for himself. He must expect that he will make mistakes. He may end in total failure. He must take his chances and be willing to pay the cost of his adventure. I know professional scholars who are so afraid they may write or say something which their colleagues will show to be wrong that they never express an opinion of their own or commit themselves to any downright statement. Such equivocation and qualifying--playing safe--is not what I mean by doubt. I do not mean merely that one should be always on guard against the possibility of error, but that one should learn to hold all one’s beliefs with a half-amused light-heartedness. Most minds are loaded down with the seriousness of their convictions. Solemnity in the presence of our eternal verities is awkwardness, and makes us always a little ridiculous, giving us the appearance of one about to shake hands with the President. Why not enjoy the humor of the situation? Our great truths may all the while be “spoofing” us. It will do no harm to give them a sly wink now and then. Crowd men have no sense of humor. It is very difficult to educate solemn and opinionated people. Like Omar, they always come out by that same door wherein they went. I have known students to complete a course of study having learned nothing, because of their disinclination to consider any fact which might cause them to surrender some belief about religion or economic theory with which they entered. Whoever leaves an institution of learning with the same general outlook on life that he had when he first came might better have employed his time otherwise. He is not a student; he is a church-member. A well-known reformer says in his autobiography that his education, to the present time, has been a long process of “un-learning.” The progressive disillusionment began in college when he was forced to abandon the religious dogmas of his childhood. It continued through a series of hard experiences and misdirected efforts to improve the world from each of which he reaped a harvest of doubt, leaving behind the exposure of one economic or sociological fallacy after another, until in the end he had left only his faith in Woodrow Wilson and in the proletariat. Then he lost Wilson. Perhaps one who still has the proletariat is not utterly disillusioned. If the education continues that too may go the way of earlier beliefs. It is one thing to despair of a society only one section of which can stand the test of our idealism. It is quite another matter if one is led to re-examine one’s idealism. It is this latter kind of doubt which has the greater importance. The significant thing is not the particular belief which a man gives up or retains but the manner in which he believes what he does believe. Change the latter and you change a basic habit pattern; you change the man.