as she was by the serpent, before he could he induced to pluck
the apple from the tree of knowledge. I should have swallowed
every apple on the tree the moment the owner's back was turned.
When Gray said "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise,"
he forgot that it is godlike to be wise; and since nobody wants
bliss particularly, or could stand more than a very brief taste
of it if it were attainable, and since everybody, by the deepest
law of the Life Force, desires to be godlike, it is stupid, and
indeed blasphemous and despairing, to hope that the thirst for
knowledge will either diminish or consent to be subordinated to
any other end whatsoever. We shall see later on that the claim
that has arisen in this way for the unconditioned pursuit of
knowledge is as idle as all dreams of unconditioned activity; but
none the less the right to knowledge must be regarded as a
fundamental human right. The fact that men of science have had to
fight so hard to secure its recognition, and are still so
vigorously persecuted when they discover anything that is not
quite palatable to vulgar people, makes them sorely jealous for
that right; and when they hear a popular outcry for the
suppression of a method of research which has an air of being
scientific, their first instinct is to rally to the defence of
that method without further consideration, with the result that
they sometimes, as in the case of vivisection, presently find
themselves fighting on a false issue.


THE FLAW IN THE ARGUMENT

I may as well pause here to explain their error. The right to
know is like the right to live. It is fundamental and