152 NORMATIVE SCIENCE 



I 



The most general community of interest which unites the various 

 scientific activities that belong to our division is this: We are all 

 concerned with what may be called ideal truth, as distinct from 

 physical truth. Some of us also have a strong interest in physical 

 truth; but none of us lack a notable and scientific concern for the 

 realm of ideas, viewed as ideas. 



Let me explain what I mean by these terms. Whoever studies 

 physical truth (taking that term in its most general sense) seeks to 

 observe, to collate, and, in the end, to control, facts which he regards 

 as external to his own thought. But instead of thus looking mainly 

 without, it is possible for a man chiefly to take account, let us say, 

 of the consequences of his own hypothetical assumptions assump- 

 tions which may possess but a very remote relation to the physical 

 world. Or again, it is possible for such a student to be mainly de- 

 voted to reflecting upon the formal validity of his own inferences, or 

 upon the meaning of his own presuppositions, or upon the value and 

 the interrelation of human ideals. Any such scientific work, reflective, 

 considerate principally of the thinker's own constructions and pur- 

 poses, or of the constructions and purposes of humanity in general, 

 is a pursuit of ideal truth. The searcher who is mainly devoted to 

 the inquiry into what he regards as external facts, is indeed active; 

 but his activity is moulded by an order of existence which he conceives 

 as complete apart from his activity. He is thoughtful; but a power 

 not himself assigns to him the problems about which he thinks. He 

 is guided by ideals; but his principal ideal takes the form of an ac- 

 ceptance of the world as it is, independently of his ideals. His deal- 

 ings are with nature. His aim is the conquest of a foreign realm. 

 But the student of what may be called, in general terms, ideal truth, 

 while he is devoted as his fellow, the observer of outer nature, to 

 the general purpose of being faithful to the verity as he finds it, is 

 still aware that his own way of finding, or his own creative activity 

 as an inventor of hypotheses, or his own powers of inference, or his 

 conscious ideals, constitute in the main the object into which he is 

 inquiring, and so form an essential aspect of the sort of verity which 

 he is endeavoring to discover. The guide, then, of such a student is, 

 in a peculiar sense, his own reason. His goal is the comprehension of 

 his own meaning, the conscious and thoughtful conquest of himself. 

 His great enemy is not the mystery of outer nature, but the imper- 

 fection of his reflective powers. He is, indeed, as unwilling as is any 

 scientific worker to trust private caprices. He feels as little as does 

 the observer of outer facts, that he is merely noting down, as they 

 pass, the chance products of his arbitrary fantasy. For him, as for 

 any scientific student, truth is indeed objective; and the standards 



