What a myth never contains is the
critical power to separate its truths from its errors. For that power
comes only by realizing that no human opinion, whatever its supposed
origin, is too exalted for the test of evidence, that every opinion is
only somebody's opinion. And if you ask why the test of evidence is
preferable to any other, there is no answer unless you are willing to
use the test in order to test it.
4
The statement is, I think, susceptible of overwhelming proof, that
moral codes assume a particular view of the facts. Under the term
moral codes I include all kinds: personal, family, economic,
professional, legal, patriotic, international. At the center of each
there is a pattern of stereotypes about psychology, sociology, and
history. The same view of human nature, institutions or tradition
rarely persists through all our codes. Compare, for example, the
economic and the patriotic codes. There is a war supposed to affect
all alike. Two men are partners in business. One enlists, the other
takes a war contract. The soldier sacrifices everything, perhaps even
his life. He is paid a dollar a day, and no one says, no one believes,
that you could make a better soldier out of him by any form of
economic incentive. That motive disappears out of his human nature.
The contractor sacrifices very little, is paid a handsome profit over
costs, and few say or believe that he would produce the munitions if
there were no economic incentive.
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