than his own. The first duty then of the man of vivid nature is to
fight resolutely against the sin of impatience. He must realize
that some people may regard as a certainty what is to him a
questionable opinion, and that his business is not the destruction
of the certainties of others, but the defining the limits of his
own. The sympathy that can be practised intellectually is the
resolute attempt to enter into the position of others. The
temptation to argue with people of convinced views should be
resolutely resisted; argument only strengthens and fortifies the
convictions of opponents, and I can honestly say that I have never
yet met a man of strong intellectual fibre who was ever converted
by argument. Yet I am sure that it is a duty for all of us to aim
at a just appreciation of various points of view, and that we ought
to try to understand others rather than to persuade them.

So far I have been speaking of the intellectual region, and I would
sum it up by saying that I think that the duty of every thoughtful
person, who desires to avoid egotism in the intellectual region, is
to cultivate what may be called the scientific, or even the
sceptical spirit, to weigh evidence, and not to form conclusions
without evidence. Thus one avoids the dangers of egotism best,
because egotism is the frame of mind of the man who says credo quia
credo. Whereas the aim of the philosopher should be to take nothing
for granted, and to be ready to give up personal preferences in the
light of truth. In dealing with others in the intellectual region,
the object should be not to convince, but to get people to state
their own views, and to realize that unless a man converts himself,
no one else can; the method therefore should be not to attack
conclusions, but to ask patiently for the evidence upon which those
conclusions are based.