curse still holds: "Of every tree in the garden thou mayest freely
eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not
eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die." Few people confess that they are afraid of knowledge, but the
university presidents, ministers, and editors who most often and
publicly laud what they are wont to call "the fearless pursuit of
truth", feel compelled, in the interest of public morals and order, to
discourage any reckless indulgence in the fruit of the forbidden tree,
for the inexperienced may select an unripe apple and suffer from the
colic in consequence. "Just look at Russia!" Better always, instead of
taking the risk on what the church calls "science falsely so called",
fall back on ignorance rightly so called. No one denies that
Intelligence is the light of the world and the chief glory of man,
but, as Bertrand Russell says, we dread its indifference to
respectable opinions and what we deem the well-tried wisdom of the
ages. "It is," as he truly says, "fear that holds men back; fear that
their cherished beliefs should prove harmful, fear lest they
themselves should prove less worthy of respect than they have supposed
themselves to be. 'Should the workingman think freely about property?
What then will become of us, the rich? Should young men and women
think freely about sex? What then will become of morality? Should
soldiers think freely about war? What then will become of military
discipline?'"

This fear is natural and inevitable, but it is none the less dangerous
and discreditable. Human arrangements are no longer so foolproof as
they may once have been when the world moved far more slowly than it
now does. It should therefore be a good deed to remove or lighten any
of the various restraints on thought. I believe that there is an easy
and relatively painless way in which our respect for the past can be