METHODS OF THE EARTH-SCIENCES 487 



system of workable hypotheses. I think we should do well to abandon 

 all claims that we are reaching absolute truth, in the severest sense 

 of that phrase, and content ourselves with the more modest effort 

 to work out a system of interpretation which shall approve itself in 

 practice under such tests as human powers can devise. Wherein lie 



The Basal Criteria of our Sciences 



I believe they lie essentially in the working quality. Whatever 

 conforms thoroughly to the working requirements of nature pro*bably 

 corresponds essentially to the absolute truth, though it may be 

 much short of the full truth. That may be accepted, for the time 

 being, as true which duly approves itself under all tests, as though 

 it were true. Whenever it seems to fail under test in any degree, 

 confidence is to be withdrawn in equal degree, and a rectification of 

 conceptions sought. This may well hold for all conceptions, however 

 fundamental, whether they relate to the physical, the vital, or the 

 mental phenomena which the earth presents. Let us entirely abandon 

 the historic effort of the metaphj-sicians to build an inverted pyramid 

 on an apex of axioms assumed to be incontestable truth, and let us 

 rear our superstructure on the results of working trials applied as 

 widely and as severely as possible. Let us seek our foundation in 

 the broadest possible contact with phenomena. I hold that the 

 working test when brought to bear in its fullest, most intimate, and 

 severest forms, is the supreme criterion of that which should stand to 

 us for truth. Our interpretative effort should, therefore, be to 

 organize a complete set of working hypotheses for all phenomena, 

 physical, vital, and mental, so far as appropriate to our sphere of 

 research. These should be at once the basis of our philosophy and 

 of our science. These hypotheses should be constantly revised, 

 extended, and elaborated by all available means, and should be tested 

 continually by every new relation which comes into view, until the 

 crucial trials shall become as the sands of the sea for multitude and 

 their severity shall have no bounds but the limits of human capacity. 

 That which under this prolonged ordeal shall give the highest grounds 

 of assurance may stand to us for science; that which shall rest more 

 upon inference than upon the firmer modes of determination may 

 stand to us for our philosophy; while that which lies beyond these, as 

 something doubtless always will, may stand to us for the working 

 material of the future. 



