A．have opinions which can not be refutedB．adopt the poi……
TEXT C
No one can be a great
thinker who does not realize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow
his intellect m whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the
errors of one who, with due study and prep oration, thinks for himself, than by
the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer
themselves to think. Not that it is solely, or chiefly, to form great thinkers
that freedom of thinking is required. On the contrary, it is as much or even
more indispensable to enable average human beings to attain the mental stature
which they are capable of. There have been, and may again be, great individual
thinkers in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. But there never has been,
nor ever will be, in that atmosphere an intellectually active people. Where any
people has made a temporary approach to such a character, it has been because
the dread of heterodox speculation was for a time suspended. Where there is a
tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed: which can occupy
humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high
scale of mental activity which had made some periods of history so remarkable,
Never when controversy avoided the subjects which was large and important enough
to kindle enthusiasm was the mind of a people stirred up from its foundations
and the impulse given which raised even persons of the most ordinary intellect
to something of the dignity of thinking beings.
He who knows
only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and
no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute
the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are,
he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him
would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is
either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side
to which he feels the most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the
arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them,
and accompanied by what they offer as refutations, or bring them into real
contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who
actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for
them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form: be must
feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to
encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the
portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a
hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition; even of those who
can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it
might be false for anything they know; they have never thrown themselves into
the mental position of those who think differently from them and considered what
such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense
of the word, know the doctrines which they themselves profess. They do not know
the doctrines which they themselves profess. They do not know those parts of it
which explain and justify the remainder; the considerations which show that a
fact which seemingly conflicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of
two apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred.
(614)
According to the author, it is always advisable to ______.
A．have opinions which can not be refuted
B．adopt the point of view to which he feels the most inclination
C．be acquainted with the arguments favoring the point of view with which he disagrees
D．suspended heterodox speculation
