Mencken on 'Two Types of People'

Here's a bit i found on Derek Lowe's blog In the Pipeline. It is a quote from H. L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore, taken from his 1925 essay "Off the Grand Banks":

This, at least, I have observed in forty-five years: that there are men who search for it [truth], whatever it is, wherever it may lie, patiently, honestly, with due humility, and that there are other men who battle endlessly to put it down, even though they don't know what it is. To the first class belong the scientists, the experimenters, the men of curiosity. To the second belong politicians, bishops, professors, mullahs, tin pot messiahs, frauds and exploiters of all sorts - in brief, the men of authority. . .All I find there is a vast enmity to the free functioning of the spirit of man. There may be, for all I know, some truth there, but it is truth made into whips, rolled into bitter pills. . .

I find myself out of sympathy with such men. I shall keep on challenging them until the last galoot's ashore.

This is a wonderful cry for the freedom of thought and the great quest for science in the modern spirit which has burned for nearly 400 years. This is merely a blip in human history. Much like the Song Dynasty was a brief flicker of progress and hope that died out. As I watch the political battle in the US between progressives and antediluvians, I'm reminded that 400 years is not a fast foothold on the human mind. What has been gained can be lost in a new Dark Age.

All we can do is hold a candle up to the darkness. Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World is one of the better candles to hold high. It is his effort to keep the brief light of science alive and extend it beyond its current, all-too-short 400 year run.