Sceptical Thought

Sceptical modes of thinking have a direct and natural tendency to beget a captious, quibbiing, sophistical habit; to create and foster literary arrogance and conceit; to destroy whatever is candid and ingenuous in controversial warfare; to make the mind diminutive, rickety, and distorted; to induce men to set a higher value on crotchety sophisms than on the inspirations of real wisdom and science; to make them more eager to puzzle and bewilder than to convince and instruct; to lead them to view questions of great and acknowledged interest to their species with coldness, apathy, and distrust; to throw a gloom and cloudiness over the whole mind; to cause men to take delight in picking holes in the garment of knowledge, instead of endeavouring to multiply its sheltering folds over their race; to mistake verbal wranglings and snarlish disputations as certain indications of real talent and genius; to make men slaves to ambitious singularities and mental eccentricities; and, in one word, the general and most valuable of our mental principles become paralysed and enfeebled by a constant habit of frivolous doubting and minute fastidiousness as to the degree of evidence required to produce firm and rational conviction on subjects of vital importance.—Blakey.