184 BELIEFS AND EXISTENCES 

 III 



So much for the situation against which some 

 contemporary tendencies are a deliberate protest. 



What of the positive conditions that give us 

 not mere protest, like the unreasoning revolt of 

 heart against head found at all epochs, but some 

 thing articulate and constructive? The field is 

 only too large, and I shall limit myself to the 

 evolution of the knowledge standpoint itself. I 

 shall suggest, first, that the progress of intelligence 

 directed upon natural materials has evolved a pro 

 cedure of knowledge that renders untenable the 

 inherited conception of knowledge; and, secondly, 

 that this result is reinforced by the specific results 

 of some of the special sciences. 



1. First, then, the very use of the knowledge 

 standpoint, the very expression of the knowledge 

 preoccupation, has produced methods and tests 

 that, when formulated, intimate a radically differ 

 ent conception of knowledge, and of its relation to 

 existence and belief, than the orthodox one. 



The one thing that stands out is that thinking 

 is inquiry, and that knowledge as science is the 

 outcome of systematically directed inquiry. For 

 a time it was natural enough that inquiry should 

 be interpreted in the old sense, as just change of 

 subjective attitudes and opinions to make them 

 square up with a &quot; reality &quot; that is already there 



