When a commission is formed to investigate the matter, it emerges that that the accusations were based on insufficient evidence and that this insufficiency would have been clear if anyone had bothered to check. Clifford's essay is a denunciation of credulousness. His general line is that someone who is careless or uncritical in the formation of his opinions places others at risk, since false beliefs can be dangerous. But even the most ordinary person is in a position to affect what others do. He sets an example by his habits of mind, and a bad example is a pernicious one.
Society is a collaboration.
No one is in it alone. So we have a firm and overriding moral responsibility not to let our passions our prejudices or our wishes interfere with the rational assessment of evidence. This is the background for James's famous essay. In the end James concludes that in certain cases it is not only permissible but inevitable that one's passional, non-rational nature will determine what one believes. Unlike Pascal, James does not directly appeal to our concern for future happiness, although the arguments do have a number of affinities.