现代大学精读英语4 lesson six课文(外语教学与研究出版社).doc

Lesson 6 Groundless Beliefs In future we are going to follow the practice----until it become a habit ----of classifying proposition s according to their grounds .Of every statement we come across, we shall ask :HOW DO WE KONW THAT?WHAT REASON HAVE WE FOR BELIEVING THAT？ON WHAT GROUNG IS THAT STATEMENT BASED? Probably we shall be astonished at the number of propositions met with in everyday life which we shall find it necessary to class as groundless. They rest upon mere tradition, or on somebody’s bare assertion unsupported by even a show of proof...... It may be a belief which we originally accepted as a result of simple suggestion and we have continued to hold it ever since. It has now become one of our regular habits of thought .Perhaps somebody -somewhere-sometime told us a certain thing, and quite uncritically we accepted and believed it. Perhaps it was way back in our early childhood---before we had even developed the power of questioning anything that might be told to us .Many of our strongest convictions were established then；and now ,in about life, we find it most difficult even to question their truth. They seem to us obviously true. But if the staunchest Rome Catholic and the staunchest Presbyterian ha been exchanged when infants, and if they had been brought up with home and all other influences reversed we can have very little doubt what the result would have been. It is consistent with all our knowledge of psychology to conclude that each would have grown up holding exactly the opposite beliefs to those he holds now...and each would then have left as sure of the truth of his opinion as he now feels---of truth of the opposite opinion. The same thing is true, of course, of many beliefs other than those of a religious nature. If we had grown up in a community where polygamy or head-hunting or infanticide, or gladiatorial fighting, or duelling, was regarded as the normal and natural thing---then we should have grown up to regard it as obviously natural and