Do you not see that this, which goes under the name of education,
instead of fitting a man to find the truth, may distinctly and
definitely unfit him, make it harder for him to find any truth except
that which is contained in the system which has been drilled into him
from his childhood up and year after year? Education, in order to fit a
man to be a truth-seeker, must be something different from this merely
teaching a man a certain system, a certain set of ideas, and drilling
him into the belief that he must defend these ideas against all
corners.
A good many people, then, who are called educated, are not educated at
all. I have had this question asked me repeatedly: If your position is
true, here is a college graduate, and here is another; and here is a
minister of such a denomination, or a priest of the Catholic Church;
why do they not accept your ideas? Do you not see, however, that this
so-called education may stand squarely in the way?
Now, in the second place, I want to dwell a little on the difficulty of
people's getting rid of a theory which possesses their minds, and
substituting for it another theory. And I wish you to note that it is
not a religious difficulty nor a theological difficulty nor a Baptist
difficulty nor a Presbyterian difficulty: it is a human difficulty.
There is no body of people on the face of the earth that is large
enough to contain all the world's bigotry. It overflows all fences and
gets into all enclosures.
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