#098: Persecution for a Hypothesis?

"Now here we find ourselves confronted with an amazing fact. When, in the past, opinions so arguable have been enforced by State violence, it has been at the instigation of fanatics who held them for fixed and flaming certainties. If truths could not be evaded by their enemies, neither could they be altered even by their friends. But what are the certain truths that the secular arm must now lift the sword to enforce? Why, they are that very mass of bottomless questions and bewildered answers that we have been studying in the last chapters—questions whose only interest is that they are trackless and mysterious; answers whose only glory is that they are tentative and new. The devotee boasted that he would never abandon the faith; and therefore he persecuted for the faith. But the doctor of science actually boasts that he will always abandon a hypothesis; and yet he persecutes for the hypothesis. The Inquisitor violently enforced his creed, because it was unchangeable. The savant enforces it violently because he may change it the next day."

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Eugenics and Other Evils by G.K. Chesterton. Cassell and Company, Limited London, New York, Toronto & Melbourne, 1922 at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25308/25308-h/25308-h.htm (Bold emphasis added.)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton KC*SG (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer,[2] philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox".[3] Time magazine observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out."[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton