rely.

The "real" reasons, which explain how it is we happen to hold a
particular belief, are chiefly historical. Our most important
opinions--those, for example, having to do with traditional,
religious, and moral convictions, property rights, patriotism,
national honor, the state, and indeed all the assumed foundations of
society--are, as I have already suggested, rarely the result of
reasoned consideration, but of unthinking absorption from the social
environment in which we live. Consequently, they have about them a
quality of "elemental certitude", and we especially resent doubt or
criticism cast upon them. So long, however, as we revere the
whisperings of the herd, we are obviously unable to examine them
dispassionately and to consider to what extent they are suited to the
novel conditions and social exigencies in which we find ourselves
to-day.

The "real" reasons for our beliefs, by making clear their origins and
history, can do much to dissipate this emotional blockade and rid us
of our prejudices and preconceptions. Once this is done and we come
critically to examine our traditional beliefs, we may well find some
of them sustained by experience and honest reasoning, while others
must be revised to meet new conditions and our more extended
knowledge. But only after we have undertaken such a critical
examination in the light of experience and modern knowledge, freed
from any feeling of "primary certitude", can we claim that the "good"
are also the "real" reasons for our opinions.

I do not flatter myself that this general show-up of man's thought
through the ages will cure myself or others of carelessness in