CONFLICTING DOCTRINES SHARE THE TRUTH BETWEEN THEM - - JOHN STUART MILL
It still remains to speak of one of the principal causes which make diversity of opinion advantageous, and will continue to do so until mankind shall have entered a stage of intellectual advancement which at present seems at an incalculable distance.
We have hitherto considered only two possibilities: that the
received opinion may be false, and
some other opinion, consequently, true; or that, the received opinion being
true, a conflict with the opposite error is essential to a clear apprehension
and deep feeling of its truth. But there is a commoner case than either of
these; when the conflicting doctrines, instead of being one true and the other
false, share the truth between them; and the nonconforming opinion is needed to
supply the remainder of the truth, of which the received doctrine embodies only
a part.
Popular opinions, on subjects not
palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth. They are a part of the truth;
sometimes a greater, sometimes a
smaller part, but exaggerated, distorted, and disjoined from the truths by
which they ought to be accompanied and limited. Heretical opinions, on the
other hand, are generally some of these suppressed and neglected truths,
bursting the bonds which kept them down, and either seeking reconciliation with
the truth contained in the common opinion, or fronting it as enemies, and
setting themselves up, with similar exclusiveness,
as the whole truth. The latter case is hitherto the most frequent, as, in the
human mind, one-sidedness has always been the rule, and many-sidedness the
exception. Hence, even in revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another rises.
Even progress, which ought to superadd,
for the most part only substitutes, one partial and incomplete truth for another;
improvement consisting chiefly in this, that the new fragment of truth is more
wanted, more adapted to the needs of the time, than that which it displaces.
Such being the partial character of prevailing opinions, even when resting on a
true foundation.
John Stuart Mill
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