ig, Tory, Radical, Socialist,
Evolutionist, Broad, Low, or High Church. We may meet a man without
knowing under what label he walks and be charmed with his company:
meet him again when his name is known, and all is changed.

Such errors are called Fallacies of Association to point to the
psychological explanation. This is that by force of association
certain ideas are brought into the mind, and that once they are there,
we cannot help giving them objective reality. For example, a doctor
comes to examine a patient, and finds certain symptoms. He has lately
seen or heard of many cases of influenza, we shall say; influenza is
running in his head. The idea once suggested has all the advantage of
possession.

But why is it that a man cannot get rid of an idea? Why does it force
itself upon him as a belief? Association, custom, explains how it got
there, but not why it persists in staying.

To explain this we must call in our first fallacious principle, the
Impatience of Doubt or Delay, the imperative inward need for a belief
of some sort.

And this leads to another remark, that though for convenience of
exposition, we separate these various influences, they are not
separated in practice. They may and often do act all together, the
Inner Sophist concentrating his forces.

Finally, it may be asked whether, seeing that illusions are the
offspring of such highly respectable qualities as excess of energy,
excess of feeling, excess of docility, it is a good thing for man to
be disillusioned. The rose-colour that lies over the world for youth
is projected from the abundant energy and feeling within: disillusion
comes with failing energies, when hope is "unwilling to be fed". Is
it good then to be disillusioned? The foregoing exposition would
be egregiously wrong if the majority of mankind did not resent the
intrusion of Reason and its organising lieutenant Logic. But really
there is no danger that this intrusion succeeds to the extent of
paralysing action and destroying feeling, and uprooting custom.
The utmost that Logic can do is to modify the excess of these good
qualities by setting forth the conditions of rational belief. The
student who masters those conditions will soon see the practical
wisdom of applying his knowledge only in cases where the grounds of
rational belief are within his reach. To apply it to the consequences
of every action would be to yield to that bias of incontinent activity
which is, perhaps, our mo