
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Clifford , William Kingdon (1884), The scientific basis of morals, Retrieved on 2012-01-31Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: ethics Memes
31 JAN 2012
The Danger of Believing Unproven Things
... If I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it...Is that we fall into the habit of believing these things, the empirical knowledge we have crumbles, and we return to savagery.