THE PHILOSOPHIC TEMPER 



great cost, perhaps because he would rather have 

 his beliefs true than upheld --to maintain the 

 philosophic temper which may have caused his 

 change, and to be prepared, if necessary, to change 

 again. For inconsistency is the bugbear of all but 

 the greatest minds, as Emerson has taught us. 



And if the philosophic temper is rare enough 

 in the priest or clergyman who has lost his faith, 

 it is equally rare in the scientist who, like these, 

 is pledged to serve truth. You are committed to 

 an hypothesis. Perhaps you are its author, and 

 it goes by your name, or you have written and 

 worked in its defence. Do you welcome the 

 young epoch -maker, who was neither born nor 

 thought of when you were making your name? 

 But rarely, under such familiar circumstances, 

 do we see the philosophic temper. The facts that 

 do not fit your hypothesis must be discredited or 

 trimmed thereto. You would rather have your be 

 liefs upheld than have them true. 



When a Darwin or a Huxley or a Spencer dies, 

 it is commonly and properly asserted of him that 

 his leading characteristic was a love of truth. 

 But if you listen to those who, for one reason or 

 another, are in opposition to such men, you will 

 hear that to claim a love of truth as a man s lead 

 ing characteristic is to insist on the obvious, all 

 healthy-minded people being endowed, as a matter 

 of course, with some measure of this high passion. 

 These critics are prepared to maintain that in all 

 decent persons, themselves included, there is the 



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