Christian Churches and Churches of Christ; Lutz, Henry Frey, 1868-1926 -- Biography; Restoration movement (Christianity)
If we turn to the reasoning faculties we find that they have been the
cause of most contention and misunderstanding. On the one hand have
been the extreme intuitionalists, or deductive theorizers, who for
centuries limited philosophical thought almost entirely to fruitless,
abstract, deductive reasoning based upon premises that had no real
foundation in facts. As John Stuart Mill pointed out, the mind may
become so accustomed to conceiving of a thing as true that it seems
like an axiomatic truth, although facts discovered later may show that
it was an error. Thus the time was before modern discoveries, when
people could not conceive of persons living under the earth walking
with their heads down, or of objects attracted towards each other
without some material object to connect them and thus draw them
together.
Other extremists have looked upon the mind as a blank sheet, or have
become so skeptical of its intuitive impressions that they mistrust its
guidance almost entirely, especially in religious matters; although,
strange to say, they inconsistently seem to trust it all the more in
material things.
It cannot be denied that our "think so's," "feel so's," impressions,
prejudices and inherited or preconceived ideas may seem as infallible
to us as any so-called axiomatic or intuitive truths. This delusion of
the mind has led to multitudes of errors and has held people in bondage
to ignorance and superstition in all centuries and in all countries. It
has ever been the greatest hindrance to progress. Closely allied to
this and reinforcing it is the inertia of the mind, through which it
naturally continues to run in the grooves in which it has been running.
After awhile the grooves or ruts become so deep and smooth that it
seems next to impossible to turn out of them without breaking something
or upsetting the mental team. We see on every hand how hard it is to
get away from the ideas we have inherited or in which we have lived a
long time. When truth, like a vine-dresser, has attempted to trim off
these unnecessary and injurious accretions, it has always raised the
hue and cry that the foundations of truth were being destroyed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account