The
methods of social science are so little perfected that in many of the
serious decisions and most of the casual ones, there is as yet no
choice but to gamble with fate as intuition prompts.
But we can make a belief in reason one of those intuitions. We can use
our wit and our force to make footholds for reason. Behind our
pictures of the world, we can try to see the vista of a longer
duration of events, and wherever it is possible to escape from the
urgent present, allow this longer time to control our decisions. And
yet, even when there is this will to let the future count, we find
again and again that we do not know for certain how to act according
to the dictates of reason. The number of human problems on which
reason is prepared to dictate is small.
5
There is, however, a noble counterfeit in that charity which comes
from self-knowledge and an unarguable belief that no one of our
gregarious species is alone in his longing for a friendlier world. So
many of the grimaces men make at each other go with a flutter of their
pulse, that they are not all of them important. And where so much is
uncertain, where so many actions have to be carried out on guesses,
the demand upon the reserves of mere decency is enormous, and it is
necessary to live as if good will would work. We cannot prove in every
instance that it will, nor why hatred, intolerance, suspicion,
bigotry, secrecy, fear, and lying are the seven deadly sins against
public opinion.
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