Charles Sanders Peirce wrote:
"Religious infallibilism, caught in the current of the times, shows symtomps of declaring itself to be inly practically speaking infallible; and when it has thus once confessed itself subject to gradations, there will remain over no relic of the good old tenth-century infallibilism, except that of the infallible scientists, under which head I include, not merely the kind of characters that manufacture scientific catechisms and homilies, churches and creeds, and who are indeed "born missionaries," but all those respectable and cultivated persons who, having acquired their notions of science from reading, and not from research, have the idea that "science" means knowledge, while the truth is, it is a misnomer apllied to the pursuit of those who are devoured by a desire to find things out."
1. What does "gradations" mean in the context? (it means "changes"???)
2. What do "over no relic of the good old tenth-century infallibilism" and "under which head I include" mean?
3. "The pursuit" of what? (of knowledge?)
4. The blue sentence is too long for me to get what the author means. Please help!
Please help!!!
Cadzao