Believing Is Seeing

Untutored minds are very prone to mistake inferences for observations, and prepossessions for facts; their observations and their judgments are alike vitiated by dogma and prejudice; they do not seek to investigate, they seek to prove. The old proverb is inverted, believing is seeing. The student of science must pledge himself to do his best to eliminate prepossession and dogma from his judgments, and he must spare no pains to acquire the habit of recording phenomena as they are observed; and to distinguish sharply between what is or has been actually seen, and what is mentally supplied. It requires a mind disciplined like a soldier to avoid the natural inclination to look away from unwelcome facts.

– Frederick Ludwig Hoffman