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CHAIRMAN'S INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS

I have come here to-night, partly because I wantto hear Mr. Russell, and partly because of an oldaffection for South Place and its traditions. Imyself have been for more than forty years aprofessional teacher; and it is as a teacher—whothirty-seven years ago was dismissed for refusingreligious conformity—that I most easily approachthe problem of free thought. Though systems ofeducation professing to teach men and womenhow to think have been in use in Europe for,perhaps, three thousand years, we have not yetreached that degree of success which would beshown if most educated people came to much thesame conclusions on the great problems of lifefrom a study of the same evidence. Everywhereyou have rebels; but ninety per cent. of Frenchor American students of history come to Frenchor American conclusions, and eighty-five per cent.of English students come to English conclusions;eighty per cent. of Eton boys hold Eton politicalopinions all their lives; ninety per cent. of theIrish Catholic population of the United Statesseem to hold generation after generation identicalopinions on religion and politics which are notheld by the vast majority of Americans. It may6be said that in these cases only one kind ofevidence is allowed to reach the students in eachinstitution. But everybody reads newspapers,and talks with his neighbours, and travels, andvisits museums; and most intelligent people readbooks and magazines. Sooner or later much ofthe same evidence reaches us all. I myself believethat one of the main reasons why we do not to agreater degree draw the same conclusions fromthat evidence is that we do not really learn thedifficult art of thought. A boy at school is taughtto memorize and to understand mathematicalformulæ or foreign languages or scientific statements.But in weighing evidence the effort ofmemorizing, and even the effort of understanding,are not of the first importance. The effectiveprocess is a sort of painful and watchful expectancy.A schoolboy or a college student findsthat he has an uncomfortable sense of unrealityin repeating some accustomed formula, or writingan essay to enforce some accustomed line ofargument. He shrinks from that feeling, as allanimals shrink from discomfort. If he weretaught what are the conditions of effective thought,and were encouraged to act on that lesson, hewould know that it is only by resolutely fasteningon such vague and painful premonitions, andforcing them to come into full consciousness anddisclose their deeper causes and tendencies thathe can arrive at new truth or make some old truthhis own.

7But who is going to tell him this secret?Every day in London thousands of clever andsympathetic

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