A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I | Page 4

Copernicus, who held the ingenuity of that theory in very high esteem,
and some, I think, who even inclined towards it. In the seventeenth

century, the depravation of meaning took place, in England at least.
Phillips says paradox is "a thing which seemeth strange"--here is the
old meaning: after a colon he proceeds--"and absurd, and is contrary to
common opinion," which is an addition due to his own time.
Some of my readers are hardly inclined to think that the word paradox
could once have had no disparagement in its meaning; still less that
persons could have applied it to themselves. I chance to have met with
a case in point against them. It is Spinoza's Philosophia Scripturæ
Interpres, Exercitatio Paradoxa, printed anonymously at
Eleutheropolis, in 1666. This place was one of several cities in the
clouds, to which the cuckoos resorted who were driven away by the
other birds; that is, a feigned place of printing, adopted by those who
would have caught it if orthodoxy could have caught them. Thus, in
1656, the works of Socinus could only be printed at Irenopolis. The
author deserves his self-imposed title, as in the following:[4]
"Quanto sane satius fuisset illam [Trinitatem] pro mysterio non
habuisse, et Philosophiæ ope, antequam quod esset statuerent,
secundum veræ logices præcepta quid esset cum Cl. Kleckermanno
investigasse; tanto fervore ac labore in profundissimas speluncas et
obscurissimos metaphysicarum speculationum atque fictionum recessus
se recipere ut ab adversariorum telis sententiam suam in tuto
collocarent. {4} Profecto magnus ille vir ... dogma illud, quamvis apud
theologos eo nomine non multum gratiæ iniverit, ita ex immotis
Philosophiæ fundamentis explicat ac demonstrat, ut paucis tantum
immutatis, atque additis, nihil amplius animus veritate sincere deditus
desiderare possit."
This is properly paradox, though also heterodox. It supposes, contrary
to all opinion, orthodox and heterodox, that philosophy can, with slight
changes, explain the Athanasian doctrine so as to be at least compatible
with orthodoxy. The author would stand almost alone, if not quite; and
this is what he meant. I have met with the counter-paradox. I have
heard it maintained that the doctrine as it stands, in all its mystery is a
priori more likely than any other to have been Revelation, if such a
thing were to be; and that it might almost have been predicted.

After looking into books of paradoxes for more than thirty years, and
holding conversation with many persons who have written them, and
many who might have done so, there is one point on which my mind is
fully made up. The manner in which a paradoxer will show himself, as
to sense or nonsense, will not depend upon what he maintains, but upon
whether he has or has not made a sufficient knowledge of what has
been done by others, especially as to the mode of doing it, a
preliminary to inventing knowledge for himself. That a little knowledge
is a dangerous thing is one of the most fallacious of proverbs. A person
of small knowledge is in danger of trying to make his little do the work
of more; but a person without any is in more danger of making his no
knowledge do the work of some. Take the speculations on the tides as
an instance. Persons with nothing but a little geometry have certainly
exposed themselves in their modes of objecting to results which require
the higher mathematics to be known before an independent opinion can
be formed on sufficient grounds. But persons with no geometry at all
have done the same thing much more completely. {5}
There is a line to be drawn which is constantly put aside in the
arguments held by paradoxers in favor of their right to instruct the
world. Most persons must, or at least will, like the lady in Cadogan
Place,[5] form and express an immense variety of opinions on an
immense variety of subjects; and all persons must be their own guides
in many things. So far all is well. But there are many who, in carrying
the expression of their own opinions beyond the usual tone of private
conversation, whether they go no further than attempts at oral
proselytism, or whether they commit themselves to the press, do not
reflect that they have ceased to stand upon the ground on which their
process is defensible. Aspiring to lead others, they have never given
themselves the fair chance of being first led by other others into
something better than they can start for themselves; and that they
should first do this is what both those classes of others have a fair right
to expect. New knowledge, when to any purpose, must come by
contemplation of old knowledge in every matter which concerns
thought; mechanical contrivance sometimes, not very often, escapes
this rule. All the men who are now called