Mathematical philosophy, a study of fate and freedom; lectures for educated laymen, by Cassius J. Keyser.

146 MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY
most desires to avoid; an autonomous doctrine, because
its elements are arranged in order and their logical connections are bared, is thereby prepared for relatively easy
examination by others, so that, if the doctrine be false,
the fact is specially liable to detection, but it is not the
aim of your propagandist to make such detection easy;
a doctrine, once it is made autonomous, though it has
thus gained in light, has lost its heat, it is lacking in punch,
as we say, or "pep," it is prepared for the service of mere
enlightenment; but your propagandist, your fanatic and
your partisan do not seek to enlighten, they seek to influence,-to get action,-and so they keep their doctrines
amorphous, malleable, and charged with emotion for
emotional utterance and emotional effect.
Well, you may say, what is to be done about it?
What is the remedy? The remedy is-Criticism-thé
Gadfly: patient, unsparing logical criticism of one's own
work in doctrine building; and, in all subjects, keen,
merciless, stinging, gadfly criticism of any and all halfbaked, logically amorphous, flabby doctrines pretending
to be important embodiments of truth or vessels of wisdom. Men must be driven by art,-the art of criticism,
-to levels of excellence higher than those to which they
are drawn by unenlightened nature.
1 am, I hope, not misunderstood in this matter. I
am far from contending,-no one can be so foolish as to
contend,-that in every field of thought workers can be
constrained by criticism to put their results in the logically
perfect form of an autonomous doctrine; man can not
be constrained to perform the impossible nor to do instantly what has at best a very remote possibility of being
done at all: what I do contend is that in all departments
of thought men can be constrained by criticism to have