DE SAUSSURE IN SCIENCE AND LITERATURE 451 



with respect any alleged revelation that recommends itself to our 

 intellects as coming from a benevolent Creator. 



I quote a portion of the summary given by Naville of the 

 scientific method adopted by de Saussure : 



' While maintaining very firmly the distinction between philosophy 

 and traditional religion, de Saussure did not regard this distinction 

 as an opposition, and he was careful to admit the possibility of a 

 special revelation of the Divinity. 



' Science thus established in absolute freedom, what are the methods 

 she should use in the construction of her theories ? This question 

 brings to the front the secular dispute between Empiricism and 

 Rationalism, between the pretension to construct a system a priori 

 and the affirmation that it is by the observation of facts that we can 

 discover the laws that govern them. De Saussure evades both these 

 dangers. He makes a firm stand against rationalism, and his reputa- 

 tion, as is well known, rests in great part on his having proved himself 

 an observer of the first rank without ever committing himself to a 

 system. He was in the habit of telling his class : " We are not the 

 schoolmasters of Nature, but the scholars of Experience." Following 

 in the steps of Galileo, he urged not only observation, but that it should 

 be conducted with the utmost precision. To count, to weigh, to 

 measure, such is the task of the Natural Student. His feelings on 

 this subject drew from him the impatient exclamation : " Some fool 

 has said that accuracy is the virtue of fools," and he went on " Yet 

 it is the fact that no trustworthy results were acquired in Physical 

 Research until men had learnt to give up flights of imagination for 

 the rule and the compass of the mathematician, and to study nature 

 in detail with the aid of the barometer, the thermometer, the hydro- 

 meter, the pluviometer, etc." 1 



' If de Saussure is very far from rationalism, he does not allow 

 himself to be drawn by a blind reaction into the waters of empiricism. 

 He recognises that observation is the essential condition of serious 

 science, but he also recognises that observation, though the basis and 

 controller of theories, is not by itself capable of their invention, and 

 he asserts the place of hypothesis. " Analogy and hypothesis, in 

 accordance with the use that is made of them, are fruitful sources of 

 truth and error." It was in this sense he expressed himself in the 

 essays which he was called on to produce in the contest for the Chair 



1 De Saussure leaves out the fact, well known to the historians of science, 

 that he had himself invented or perfected many of the instruments essential to 

 exact observations. D. W F. 



