SKEPTICISM AND IDOLATRY 191 



Thus, not only the results obtained by creative minds, 

 but also the methods of obtaining them, are important, 

 because they will ultimately be interpreted and pro- 

 mulgated to others. The harm done by a vicious 

 method of thought may outweigh the benefits of a 

 useful discovery happened upon in spite of them. 

 There is always this danger in the hypothetical method; 

 the man who assists his intellectual labors by the help 

 of crude mechanical models undoubtedly tries to keep 

 distinct in his mind the real actions of nature from 

 the properties of his model, let us say of the atom. 

 But in imparting his results to others, this model is 

 made to assume an aspect of reality in the written word 

 which was not in his own mind. Baffled by the diffi- 

 culty of expressing complicated ideas, he paints his 

 metaphorical pictures too vividly. The process grows 

 more pronounced as the idea passes from mind to 

 mind; the fictitious model grows progressively more 

 and more concrete, until to the student and to the world, 

 it is at last the concrete model of the atom that be- 

 comes the reality, while real matter dissolves into an 

 abstraction. And if words can be relied on to express 

 ideas, the creator of the atom himself is a believer 

 in the reality of that creation of his imagination, the 

 model. 



This sort of speculation is probably least dangerous 

 in pure mathematics. The mathematician looks upon 

 the world symbolically. He studies its laws from pos- 





