io SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 



it is thought that there are contradictions in an unknown 

 reality. Again, if I am not mistaken, the argument is 

 fallacious, and a better logic will show that no limits can 

 be set to the extent and nature of the unknown. And 

 when I speak of the unknown, I do not mean merely 

 what we personally do not know, but what is not known 

 to any mind. Here as elsewhere, while the older logic 

 shut out possibilities and imprisoned imagination within 

 the walls of the familiar, the newer logic shows rather 

 what may happen, and refuses to decide as to what must 

 happen. 



The classical tradition in philosophy is the last surviving 

 child of two very diverse parents : the Greek belief in 

 reason, and the mediaeval belief in the tidiness of the 

 universe. To the schoolmen, who lived amid wars, 

 massacres, and pestilences, nothing appeared so delightful 

 as safety and order. In their idealising dreams, it was 

 safety and order that they sought : the universe of 

 Thomas Aquinas or Dante is as small and neat as a 

 Dutch interior. To us, to whom safety has become 

 monotony, to whom the primeval savageries of nature 

 are so remote as to become a mere pleasing condiment 

 to our ordered routine, the world of dreams is very 

 different from what it was amid the wars of Guelf and 

 Ghibelline. Hence William James's protest against what 

 he calls the " block universe " of the classical tradition ; 

 hence Nietzsche's worship of force ; hence the verbal 

 bloodthirstiness of many quiet literary men. The barbaric 

 substratum of human nature, unsatisfied in action, finds 

 an outlet in imagination. In philosophy, as elsewhere, 

 this tendency is visible ; and it is this, rather than formal 

 argument, that has thrust aside the classical tradition 

 for a philosophy which fancies itself more virile and 

 more vital. 



