2l6
PARTISAN REVIEW
some
doctrines as such; which was to take them off from the use of
their own reason and judgment, and put them on believing and taking
them upon trust without further examination: in which posture of
blind credulity, they might be more easily governed by, and made useful
to some sort of men, who had the skill and office to guide them. Nor is
it a small power it gives one man over another, to have the authority
to be the dictator of principles, and teacher of unquestionable truths;
and to make a man swallow that for an innate principle which may
serve his purpose who teacheth them.
These words of Locke have more importance for us today than
do all of his self-contradictory speculations about the natural law, for
we live in an age that is crowded with dictators of principles who
can read essences as easily as men used to read the stars. Whether
one chooses to face them in the spirit of Dewey and Holmes or
whether one chooses the faith of Dr. Niebuhr, is itself one of those
ultimate questions which every man must answer for himself. In
answering it and in settling
upo~
his fundamental convictions, whether
moral or metaphysical, a man will always run the risk of being called
unwise, irrational, ignorant, or even mad by the dictators of prin–
ciples. Sometimes he may be persuaded to alter his beliefs, but some–
times he may reply as Hamlet replied to the Queen:
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word, which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flatt ering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks.
