i8 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



many ; — that it begins to languish at Oxford is a proof 

 that it is practically dead in the country of its birth. 

 The day has gone by when philosophical or theological 

 dogmas of any kind can throw back for generations the 

 progress of scientific investigation. There is no restric- 

 tion now on research in any field, or on the publication 

 of the truth when it has been reached. But there is 

 nevertheless a danger which we cannot afford to disregard, 

 a danger which retards the spread of scientific knowledge 

 among the unenlightened, and which flatters obscurantism 

 by discrediting the scientific method. There is a certain 

 school of thought which finds the laborious process by 

 which science reaches truth too irksome ; the temperament 

 of this school is such that it demands a short and easy 

 cut to knowledge, where knowledge can only be gained, 

 if at all, by the long and patient toiling of many groups 

 of workers, perhaps through several centuries. There are 

 various fields at the present day wherein mankind is 

 ignorant, and the honest course for us is simply to confess 

 our ignorance. This ignorance may arise from the want 

 of any proper classification of facts, or because supposed 

 facts are themselves inconsistent, unreal creations of un- 

 trained minds. But because this ignorance is frankly 

 admitted by science, an attempt is made to fence off 

 these fields as ground which science cannot profitably till, 

 to shut them up as a preserve whereon science has no 

 business to trespass. Wherever science has succeeded in 

 ascertaining the truth, there, according to the school we 

 have referred to, are the " legitimate problems of science." 

 Wherever science is yet ignorant, there, we are told, its 

 method is inapplicable ; there some other relation than 

 cause and effect (than the same sequence recurring with 

 the like grouping of phenomena), some new but undefined 

 relationship rules. In these fields, we are told, problems 

 become philosophical and can only be treated by the 

 method of philosophy. The philosophical method is op- 

 posed to the scientific method ; and here, I think, the 

 danger I have referred to arises. We have defined the 

 scientific method to consist in the orderly classification of 



