THE SCIENTIFIC MOOD 25 



Letters, vol. i. p. 168.) To read these words is to 

 breathe the scientific atmosphere. They illus- 

 trate the scientific mood better than any analysis. 

 Cautiousness, then, is characteristic of science. 

 Just as "burnt bairns dread the fire"; so the 

 scientific mood, often deceived by misobserva- 

 tion, by inferences mixed up with records, by 

 hearsay evidence, by an induction from too nar- 

 row a basis, and even by the will-o'-the-wisp 

 glamour of a brilliant hypothesis, becomes more 

 and more cautious, distrustful, "canny." One of 

 the forms of cautiousness that is most difficult 

 of attainment, and yet indispensable, is distrust 

 of our personal bias in forming judgments. Our 

 interpretations are necessarily coloured by our 

 personal experience and our social environment; 

 our hypotheses may arise from social suggestion: 

 but before they pass into the framework of 

 science they must be "de-personalized." In fact, 

 the validity of a scientific conclusion, as distin- 

 guished from a mere opinion, depends on the 

 elimination of the subjective element. As Prof. 

 Karl Pearson says : " The scientific man has above 

 all things to strive at self-elimination in his 

 judgments, to provide an argument which is as 

 true for each individual mind as for his own. 

 The classification of facts, the recognition of 

 their sequence and relative significance, is the 

 function of science, and the habit of forming a 



