The Will to Doubt

l enough for the doubter to base his claim upon; but second thought is our first duty at this time, and second thought always changes the view, and in this particular instance it w

carefully devised instruments of precision instead of arm's lengths or stone's throws and rules of thumb. In a word, science is merely the ordinary consciousness highly developed, not without considerable abstraction, into critically conscious method and clearest possible perception. Indeed, perhaps without myself clearly knowing all my reasons, I am constrained to say that science is related to ordinary perception very much as the inventor's consciousness of his wonderful flying-machine to the simple sensations of a bird. The mechanics of flying, so elaborately present to the former, are nevertheless also present in the latter, while with both we have the same eye o

nd appraise the view of science we must trace its rise as clearly as we can, and

h is to say, exclusive cultivation, with any serious change, with any upheaval in the familiar conditions of life. A man-or boy, if you prefer-is taking a cross-country run, and for a time all goes well; the manner of his going suffers no interruption, or no serious interruption; but gradually the undergrowth thickens from low bushes to higher brushwood, and at last, perhaps quite suddenly, breaking through some wild hedge, the runner finds himself at the very edge of a stream too wide and too deep for any ordinary crossing. Thereupon his running, or at least his forward running, say the running of his "real life," ceases, and looking takes its place. He is now, in a familiar phrase, "looking before leaping"; yet with his looking

o, all the limitations. Science, once more, is not strictly a personal experience, although in personal experience, like that of the cross-country runner, we can get a glimpse of just that which may develop into science. Science is characteristically a profession. The runner withholds his running for a time and merely looks and studies, yet his looking is only for a time; sooner or later he will run agai

tivity, be the activity running or living in a broader and fuller sense, always shows the different phases or factors of the experience identified more or less exclusively with as many different classes or groups, and, in respect to the particular case here under consideration, upon the rise of science society appears to delegate the work of careful observation and critical thinking to a separate class, which, as already suggested, gives up any direct respon

l life, or rather of social caste, are brought to bear upon the profession of science, giving it the peculiar conceits and advantages of class or caste, and also imposing upon it the peculiar limitations. The advantages, among others, are the strength that lies in union, and the long continuity and the imitation that always ensure an accumulation of experience and a refinement of method and an attainment to impersonal, impartial standards; the conceits are exclusiveness, sense of sanctity or intrin

witness. There is something else equally significant-something, indeed, so intimately involved in this as perhaps not properly to be referred

again, is no exception to this rule. Accordingly any abstraction in life, the isolation of any specific interest, when seen in just the light of its necessary inadequacy, of its definite, more or less exclusive partiality, must imply in life a demand for reality and completeness, and this the more as the abstraction is assertive, as the isolation is insistent. Simply, the whole life will never brook an untempered neglect from any of its always self-assertive parts. Plainly, however, as plainly as a disrupted society must mean a disrupted life for each resulting group, such a demand can be met only in one way, if the cause for it continues; it can be met only by some form of duplicity, by some way in which, however indirectly, the life of those concerned will always really be more than it seems or will always

embodies as a factor in his method? The road-mender slaves at his humble task, ignorant and yet trustful, believing in an infallible wisdom and an absolute power, and the scientist lives with great enthusiasm to know the world as it is, but tells us at the same time with no less enthusiasm and with a meaning that certainly ought to temper his exclusiveness that the object which he s

nosticism. In each of these different ways the scientist, quite outdoing or transcending his profession, recognizes a sphere of reality or a sphere of activity, that is beyond that of the knowledge which he makes his special business, and, as is very important to observe, the peculiar manner of his recogn

before leaping" is transitional or revolutionary, and while, of course, there had been transitions and degrees of scientific inquiry before, the science of the Greeks belongs to that very critical transition from Greece to Rome; and modern science, to the transition, certainly not less critical, from Christendom to-who can say to what? But not only does history show science to arise when there is a stream to cross; also it shows the life of the

lism and supernaturalism, have been inseparately associated with the rise and the successes of modern science. These philosophies, it must be remembered, are always more than so many conflicting "isms." They are, too, more than the special conceits, in theory or in practice, of so many separate social classes or of the great leaders of these classes. In their very differences they are the definite, the "public" expression of a conflict, or division, that inwardly affects every individual member, whatever his class or profession, which the society contains. In the day and generation of De

ain the semblance of conservatism and independence; but their inevitable duplicity is bound sooner or later to give a consciously conventional or utilitarian character to the conservatism, and just this makes the activity of the people instrumental or only mediately instead of immediately worthy. If, as some are sure to contend, the division of labour always tends to end, and often does end, in the formation of castes, and in consequence the instrumental character of the activities is forgotten, it needs only to be said in reply that an invitation is then given to some outside power to step in and to make use of, instead of just treasuring or hoarding, the developed instruments or utilities. Caste in the organization of society not only induces absolutism at home, but also, and in this way is fully revealed its real but suppressed utilitar

the undertaking, to trace the forerunning conditions of a period of scientific endeavour. We could then show both how scientific curiosity has developed as but one expression of a general interest in experimental endeavour, in adventure and in conquests of all sorts, and especially how this interest, with its mingling of doubt and confident seeking, has been preceded by a period of art. Art, appeal as it always is from the human as expressed in the established ways of some given social organization to the natural, shows a people sensitive to a mystery, a real but unseen end, in its developed activities, but not yet willing to let the experimental and instrumental character of those activities have free expression. It appeals to the natural, which is of course the sphere of all adventure, but, still cherishing the human, it never gets, so to speak, out of sight of home. Science, the successor of art, shows home, that is, the human and the subjective

and corrective function, which both the logic of experience and the social and historical conditions of its expression and development warranted us in ascribing to it. And, finally, we have found that in actual life abstraction and duplicity make activity conventional and utilitarian, that is to say, consciously instrumental or-let me now say-experimental. In just these conditions, then, the general abstraction and duplicity, the conscious formalism and regard for utility, and the sense of experimentation, we have the determinant, formative influences of science's attitude and method, for any given set of conditions always makes the method with which the conditions themselves are met. Socrates, with his method of cross-questioning so fatal

ities of life at large, both the bread-and-butter activities and the mechanical inventions, both the political and the industrial organizations, as supplementary aids to its observations; for just science, the looking consciousness, is the end, and this end is presumed to justify every available means. So, again, does science take the cue from its environment, expressing in its own way and to its own purposes the general experimentalism; and this the more significantly when we remember that, besides

s own way, or, as it were, projects on its own plane, what I will call the specialism of the contemporary social organization. Th

rticular to the general, as the phrase runs, not in the reverse order. Individualism has been a much misunderstood thing, be it a social movement or a logical condition of inductive thinking. The individual as person or as objective datum has been greatly abused. But at least for the present, waiving any discussion of the true character of the individual or any protest that the individual and the definite or particular must not be confused, I would only assert, but I venture to assert strongly, firs

nce, and so of a case for doubt with regard to it, has come to us. Abstraction and duplicity both suggest limitations, though these may not b