Читать книгу The World's Christians - Douglas Jacobsen - Страница 40

I still say that a scientific speculator or inquirer is not bound, in conducting research, to every moment be adjusting [that research] by the maxims of … popular traditions … being confident, from the impulse of generous faith, that, however [one’s] line of investigation may swerve now and then, and vary to and fro in its course, or threaten momentary collision or embarrassment with any other department of knowledge, theological or not, yet, if [we] let it alone, it will be sure to come home, because truth never can really be contrary to truth … There are no short cuts to knowledge, nor does the road to it always lie in the direction in which it terminates, nor are we able to see the end on starting. It may often seem to be diverging from a goal into which it will soon run without effort, if we are but patient … Moreover, it is not often the fortune of anyone to live through an investigation; the process is one of not only many stages, but of many minds. What one begins another finishes … This being the case, we are obliged … to bear for a while with what we feel to be error, in consideration of the truth in which it is eventually to issue.

John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 229–30.