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Of course we do not cease, when we cease to be children, to adopt new beliefs on mere suggestion. We continue doing it, more or less unconsciously all our lives: hence, to take only the most striking examples, the enormous influence of newspapers and the effectiveness of skilful advertising. Much of what passes as such is not, strictly, thinking at all. It is the mere "parroting" of ideas picked up by chance and adopted as our own without question. Most people, most of the time, are mere parrots. But as we leave childhood, we tend to accept only such new ideas as fit in with the ideas we already hold; and all conflicting ideas seem to us "obviously" absurd.
当然，我们成年后继续凭借“启发”和“暗示”接受新观点。我们在一生中或多或少无意识地这样继续着。这里只需要举几个最明显的例子，如报刊的巨大影响力和巧妙的广告效应。许多诸如此类的流传的观点在严格意义上来说根本不是思想。不过是鹦鹉学舌般的盲目重复偶然的获得，不加质疑地变成自己的想法。多数人在大多时候仅仅是鹦鹉学舌而已。但是随着我们告别儿童时代，我们更容易只接受那些与自己已有观点相一致的新观点；所有与其发生冲突的观点在我们看来似乎“显而易见”是荒谬的。
Propositions that are accepted simply because "everybody says so," must be classed under the same heading. The dogma may not be that of any particular individual: it may be a dogmatic statement which has been passed from one person to another, from generation to generation, perhaps for hundreds—perhaps for thousands—of years. It may be part of the traditional belief of the people or the race. In that case, it is part of our social inheritance from some period in the past. But we should fully face the fact that beliefs which are merely inherited from the past must have originated at a time when men knew much less than they know today. So the fact that a belief is "old" is no argument in its favor.
仅仅因为“每个人都这么说”而被接受的观点也应归入此类范畴。这种教条可能并非某个特定个人的观点，而可能是一个人传给另一个人，一代人传给下一代人而形成的教条性的观点，有可能已流传了几百年一甚至数千年了。这种教条可能是某个民族或种族的传统观念的一部分。在这种情况下，它是我们从过去某一历史时期传承下来的社会遗产的一部分。但是，我们应该充分认识到这样一个事实，即仅仅从过去继承下来的观点必定源于某个时期，那时人们的认知水平远不如今天。因此因为一个观点很“古老”而接受它是靠不住的。
