This fiction of infallibility is very common, and those who have not learned to doubt this fiction, who are sure that they have the truth and are on the side of the right are as a rule the more ignorant and provincial elements of the population. It is no accident that Fundamentalism, prohibition, and other forms of moral regulation exist in inverse ratio to urbanity and have their strongholds in rural communities. People to whom it never occurs to ask how they know so clearly they are right when better informed people have doubts on the subject, are the ones who naturally strive to coerce their neighbors. To many minds there are no social or moral problems. The answer is always known by the crusader. It is very simple. To him there can be no two opinions. The standards which prevail in his own parish, the self-expression of his own type, are the will of God. Principles of right and wrong are known immediately without reflection or regard to the situations where they are to be applied; they are revealed to conscience. “Right is right and wrong is wrong everywhere and forever the same!” Men who hold such a view learn little from experience, and this is why crowds never change their minds. They have first to be disintegrated and a new crowd formed about new standards, because each crowd represents its will as a divine command, a matter of eternal principle. To learn anything from experience it is necessary to take into account the results of our behavior. But when you do a thing merely because it is demanded by a universal principle which must be vindicated at all costs, or because it is a divine command to be carried out with unquestioning obedience, you need not consider the results. Hence you cannot be shown that you were mistaken. In this sense men’s gods and their _a priori_ ideas have the function of preserving their fiction of infallibility. There always appears what Professor Overstreet calls the proclamation of “the One Right Way.” Differences of opinion are held to be not mere differences of point of view, but the difference between Right and Wrong, Good and Evil. Those who think differently are the wicked, the ungodly, the _enemy_. They must be convinced by being vanquished, silenced. Every knee must bow and every tongue confess. There is no longer a meeting of minds in the search for truth. The triumph of the Right is in the belief of the average man a knockout. There must be no compromise; any attitude other than intense partisanship is disloyalty. One in a discussion must line up for or against a proposition, take sides, have a ready answer for anything that the other side says, and be sure that nothing will cause one to modify one’s views. Is any one ever convinced by public debate? Or does one emerge from a church quarrel, a political campaign, a session of the legislature, a convention of a trade union with a broader outlook or better understanding?