Article November 5, 1921 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Hugh Elliott, M. T. Z. Tyau, Charles Baskerville

[Extracts from "The Psychology of Error," by Hugh Elliott in The Edinburgh Review]

"From the individual point of view, all forms of error possess a certain very remarkable property, viz., that they are only found in other people. Every one believes that other people occasionally entertain erroneous opinions, but no one believes that he himself does. Of course every sensible person admits that he has entertained errors; and every sensible person admits that among his present opinions there may be errors, which, if properly exhibited to him, he will be ready to abandon. But the admission of an error is the same thing as an abandonment of it. It is not possible to admit that a certain opinion is false, and at the same time to continue to believe it. If we continue to believe it, we do not admit that it is false. If we do admit that it is false, we reject it from our general system of beliefs. We believe a thing because we think it is true. Indeed, this is only a different way of stating the same proposition. It follows that, of our present collection of opinions, every one appears to us to be true. We see no error in ourselves; we readily admit as an hypothesis and even as a probable one, that there is error, but we do not see it."

"As it is with individuals, so it is with peoples or races. A society naturally considers that the collective set of beliefs which prevail in it are true, hence it considers that beliefs of a contradictory character are false. We think that our outlook on life and our social institutions are founded on justice and truth; but the ancients thought the same of their outlook, and so did the Middle Ages, with a conviction probably far greater than our own. However false our beliefs, it is inevitable that we should think they are true, for otherwise we should not entertain them; and the question thus arises as to how much error there may really be in out modern modes of thought."

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