502 . THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. [CHAP. 



Reservation of Judgment. 



There is yet another characteristic needed in the 

 philosophic inind ; it is that of suspending judgment 

 when the data are insufficient. Many people will express 

 a confident opinion on almost any question which is put 

 before them, but they thereby manifest not strength, but 

 narrowness of mind. To see all sides of a complicated 

 subject, and to weigh all the different facts and probabili- 

 ties correctly, require no ordinary powers of comprehension. 

 Hence it is most frequently the philosophic mind which is 

 in doubt, and the ignorant mind which is ready with a 

 positive decision. Faraday has himself said, in a very 

 interesting lecture : x " Occasionally and frequently the 

 exercise of the judgment ought to end in absolute reser- 

 vation. It may be very distasteful, and great fatigue, to 

 suspend a conclusion ; but as we are not infallible, so we 

 ought to be cautious ; we shall eventually find our ad- 

 vantage, for the man who rests in his position is not so far 

 from right as he who, proceeding in a wrong direction, is 

 ever increasing his distance." 



Arago presented a conspicuous example of this high 

 quality of mind, as Faraday remarks ; for when he made 

 known his curious discovery of the relation of a magnetic 

 needle to a revolving copper plate, a number of supposed 

 men of science in different countries gave immediate and 

 confident explanations of it, which were all wrong. But 

 Arago, who had both discovered the phenomenon and 

 personally investigated its conditions, declined to put 

 forward publicly any theory at all. 



At the same time we must not suppose that the truly 

 philosophic mind can tolerate a state of doubt, while a 

 chance of decision remains open. In science nothing like 

 compromise is possible, and truth must be one. Hence, 

 doubt is the confession of ignorance, and involves a painful 

 feeling of incapacity. But doubt lies between error and 

 truth, so that if we choose wrongly we are further away 

 than ever from our goal. 



Summing up, then, it would seem as if the mind of 

 the great discoverer must combine contradictory attributes. 



1 Printed in Modern Culture, edited by Youmans, p. 219. 



