ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE LOGIC OF SCIENCE. 299 



merit," because he would have learned something by it, is in curious 

 contrast with the naive idea of the glossist, for whom discussion would 

 seem to have been simply a struggle. When philosophy began to 

 awake from its long slumber, and before theology completely domi- 

 nated it, the practice seems to have been for each professor to seize 

 upon any philosophical. position he found unoccupied and which seemed 

 a strong one, to intrench himself in it, and to sally forth from time to 

 time to give battle to the others. Thus, even the scanty records we 

 possess of those disputes enable us to make out a dozen or more opin- 

 ions held by different teachers at one time concerning the question of 

 nominalism and realism. Read the opening part of the " Historia 

 Calamitatum" of Abelard, who was certainly as philosophical as any 

 of his contemporaries, and see the spirit of combat which it breathes. 

 For him, the truth is simply his particular stronghold. When the 

 method of authority prevailed, the truth meant little more than the 

 Catholic faith. All the efforts of the scholastic doctors are directed 

 toward harmonizing their faith in Aristotle and their faith in the 

 Church, and one may search their ponderous folios through without 

 finding an argument which goes any further. It is noticeable that 

 where different faiths flourish side by side, renegades are looked upon 

 with contempt even by the party whose belief they adopt ; so com- 

 pletely has the idea of loyalty replaced that of truth-seeking. Since 

 the time of Descartes, the defect in the conception of truth has been 

 less apparent. Still, it will sometimes strike a scientific man that the 

 philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, 

 than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system. 

 It is hard to convince a follower of the a priori method by adducing 

 facts; but show him that an opinion he is defending is inconsistent 

 with what he has laid down elsewhere, and he will be very apt to re- 

 tract it. These minds do not seem to believe that disputation is ever 

 to cease ; they seem to think that the opinion which is natural for one 

 man is not so for another, and that belief will, consequently, never be 

 settled. In contenting themselves with fixing their own opinions by 

 a method which would lead another man to a different result, they be- 

 tray their feeble hold of the conception of what truth is. 



On the other hand, all the followers of science are fully persuaded 

 that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will 

 give one certain solution to every question to which they can be ap- 

 plied. One man may investigate the velocity of light by studying 

 the transits of Venus and the aberration of the stars ; another by the 

 oppositions of Mars and the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites; a third by 

 the method of Fizeau ; a fourth by that of Foucault ; a fifth by the 

 motions of the curves of Lissajoux; a sixth, a seventh, an eighth, and 

 a ninth, may follow the different methods of comparing the measures 

 of statical and dynamical electricity. They may at first obtain dif- 

 ferent results, but, as each perfects his method and his processes, the 



