Another trouble with the attitude of doubt is that when not properly utilized it hinders rather than aids the acquisition of truth. This is especially the case when it takes the form of _fear of prejudice_. If guided by this fear, in our anxiety not to discriminate in favor of one side of a question we are apt to discriminate in favor of the other. In an attempt to give an opposing argument due consideration, we are liable to give it undue consideration. Instead of removing prejudice with reason we may be trying to balance one prejudice with a counter prejudice. When a person disagrees with him, a very conscientious thinker, fearing that he may be prejudiced, and in order to prove himself broad-minded, will often say regarding an objection, “Well, there may be something in that.” Now your only excuse for ever saying, “There may be something in that,” will be as an attitude to assume in experimenting or observing, or looking up material or arguments to find whether there actually _is_ anything in it. Then, if you do not find anything in it you are justified in saying so—and you ought to. It is useless to stimulate doubt unless you intend, on grounds of reason, to settle the doubt. _The doubtful attitude should be maintained only so long as you are actively searching for evidence bearing on a question._ Maintained at any other time or used in any other way it means merely uncertainty, indefiniteness, vagueness, and leads nowhere. It is important that we be unprejudiced. It is even more important that our views be definite. And if our definite views are wrong? . . . But the words of Thomas Huxley on this subject cannot be improved: “A great lawyer-statesman and philosopher of a former age—I mean Francis Bacon—said that truth came out of error much more rapidly than it came out of confusion. There is a wonderful truth in that saying. Next to being right in this world, the best of all things is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will come out somewhere. If you go buzzing about between right and wrong, vibrating and fluctuating, you come out nowhere; but if you are absolutely and thoroughly and persistently wrong, you must, some of these days, have the extreme good fortune of knocking your head against a fact, and that sets you all straight again.”[13]