পাতা:হিন্দু অথবা প্রেসিডেন্‌সী কলেজের ইতিবৃত্ত - রাজনারায়ণ বসু.pdf/২৯

( ৪৩ )

তাহাতে তিনি প্রথম অপবাদ সম্বন্ধে এই উত্তর দিয়াছিলেন;—

 “Entrusted as I was for sometime with the education of youth, peculiarly circumstanced, was it for me to have made them pert and ignorant dogmatists by permitting them to know what could be said upon only one side of grave questions? Setting aside the narrowness of mind which such a course might have evinced, it would have been injurious to the mental energies and acquirements of the young men themselves. And (whatever may be said to the contrary) I can vindicate my procedure by quoting no less orthodox an authority than Lord Bacon. “If a man” says this philosopher (and no one ever had a better right to pronounce an opinion upon such matters than he) “will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts.” This I need scarcely observe is always the case with contented ignorance, when it is roused too late to thought. One doubt suggests another and universal scepticism is the consequence. I therefore thought it my duty to acquaint several of the college students with the substance of Hume's celebrated dialogue