“To be loyal to the truth is of more account than to be merely successful in formulating it.”—Popular Science Monthly for December.

Indeed it is; for loyalty to truth is the prior condition of success in formulating or stating it, and that loyalty not only precedes the special success in formulating it, but is the prior cause of universal success in its attainment. Special perceptive powers and favorable opportunities may enable scientists to ascertain certain truths, as a lamp may enable them to discover a few objects near them which darkness hides from others, but loyalty to truth reveals, like daylight, all that lies within our horizon, for it opens widely all the avenues between the mind and universal nature, and prevents our mental transparency from being darkened in any direction or relation. He who has this loyalty dominant in his nature never pronounces anything false which subsequent investigation, or the investigation by others, proves true. He never becomes an obstacle to the spread of any truth. He is always the first to welcome a new truth and the last to falter in sustaining it. He is always ready to recognize the same sincerity and fidelity in others, and to give a kindly welcome to the labors and discoveries of other followers of truth. As brave men readily recognize and honor each other, so do the soldiers of truth meet in quick sympathy and cordial co-operation.

The labors, the discoveries and promulgations of such men ever become criteria by which to test the loyalty and truthfulness of others, for, wherever they are presented, all who live in loyalty to truth are at once attracted and realize their harmony with the truth. As the magnetized iron attracts the unmagnetized, so does the loyal soul charged with truth attract all other loyal souls.

But all through human history we find that inventions, discoveries and, above all, momentous truths uniformly fail to attract the masses, either of the learned or the unlearned, as was illustrated in our December number, and hence we must conclude that, in the present early or juvenile stage of human evolution, loyalty to truth is one of the rarest virtues of humanity.

And yet, how often do we meet in literature expressions which would indicate that the writers were entirely loyal. They mistake loyalty to their own self-esteem, loyalty to their own dogmatic convictions, mental limitations, prejudices, and prepossessions for loyalty to truth, which is a passionless, modest, lovely and noble quality.No doubt the contemporaries of Galileo, Newton, and Harvey indulged in the same self-gratulations. The bigot and dogmatist in all ages have entertained no doubt of their own loyalty to truth; but it was loyalty to their own very limited perceptions, and to their profound conviction that all outside of their own sphere of perception was falsehood or nonentity, and should be received with supercilious scorn or crushing blows whenever presented.

Men’s minds are thus narrowed in the base contests of selfishness, jealousy, and fraud; but of all the demoralizing influences that darken the mind by closing up permanently its most important inlets, none have had such a wide-spread and far-reaching power for evil as the false theology which demands the absolute surrender of reason to self-evident absurdities.

Benumbed by countless centuries of superstition and passive surrender to false education, to social influences, to pre-natal conditions, to the terrors of law and custom, and to the lurid threats and horrors of the imaginary drama of eternity, the mass of mankind have lost the power of the dispassionate philosophical reasoning demanded by loyalty to truth, and they do not know how to appreciate it when they see it.

Rebelling now against this limitation and slavery, they still carry in their rebellion the marks of their slavery, and in their honest agnosticism they still fail to reason fairly in loyalty to truth, and indulge in the same dogmatism, narrowness or prejudice as when they were slaves to priestly dogmas.

It is true that in the agnostic scientific classes there is far more independent reasoning capacity generally than among those who dwell in the theological limitations, but their independence has not relieved them from the dogmatism which has so long been cultivated in the human race by all religious systems. The dogmatism of the medical college, and of most scientific associations, rivals that of theological sectarianism.

The Popular Science Monthly, from which the above expression in behalf of loyalty to truth was taken, is itself a striking illustration of disloyalty, and rigidly confines itself to the fashionable doctrines of the schools, excluding from its pages whatever differs from the prevalent scientific dogmatism, and while denouncing the dogmatism of theology, exhibiting itself a dogmatism equally blind, unreasoning and regardless of facts. Experimental demonstrations and scientific facts, which transcend the limits of their arbitrary theories, receive as little attention from the dogmatists trained in medical schools, as they would from a college of cardinals.

The Journal of Man, in the presentation of new truths, attracts only the candid, loyal and progressive. It does not hope to conquer the results of inheritance, pre-natal influence and old institutions, or force any truth upon reluctant and disloyal minds, but it knows that there is an important and growing class who sympathize with loyalty and prefer the glowing future to the decaying remains of the past.

To the party of progress, this magnificent republic opens a free and ample field. The domination of habit and transmitted dogmatism is growing continually weaker, fading away in churches and colleges. The pulpit of today is tolerant indeed in comparison with the pulpit of our fathers, and the bright, free thought of the advanced people surrounds the colleges with an atmosphere which is gradually penetrating their walls and modifying their policy. An important duty devolves upon every loyal, progressive thinker,—the duty of speaking out firmly, manfully and distinctly, to swell the volume of thought which carries mankind onward to a nobler future.