INTRODUCTION. 29 



probably not equalled the ideal greatness of Greece in 

 the Periclean age, the brilliancy of the Eenaissance in 

 Italy, or the great discoveries of the sixteenth and seven- 

 teenth centuries in France and England. But what our 

 century has done is this : it has worked out and deposited ^^.^^^^.^^^^ 

 in special terms of language a clearer view of the correct X^^it'has 

 methods for extending knowledge, and a peculiar concep- f^^'jietifod 



tion of its possible unity. At one time and that not iedge;b.un- 



T 1 **y "^ know- 



very long ago the word truth seemed to indicate to the ledge. 



seeker not only the right method and road for attaining 



knowledge, but also the end, the crown of knowledge. 



" Truth, and nothing but truth," seems still to the popular j 



mind the right maxim for seeking knowledge the whole 



truth stands before it as the unity of all knowledge, were 



it found. I think it is now sufficiently clear to the scien- 5. 



"^ Search after 



tific inquirer, as well as to the philosopher, that_ love of ^,';'^*^\j^^f 

 truth, while it does indeed denote the moral attitude of the oniTtheft- 

 inquiring mind, is insufficient to define either the path or the mquir- 



ingmind. 



the end of knowledge. " What is truth ? is still the un- j 

 solved question. The criteria of truth are still unsettled. ' 

 It would, indeed, be a sorrowful experience, a calamity of 

 unparalleled magnitude, if ever the moral ideas of truth 

 and faith should disappear out of the soul of either the 

 active worker or the inquiring thinker ; but it is with 

 these as with other treasures of our moral nature, such as 

 goodness and holiness, beauty and poetry our knowledge 

 of them does not begin, nor does it increase, by definition ; 

 and though in the unthinking years of our childhood we 

 acquire and appropriate these moral possessions through 

 the words of our mother-tongue, they rarely gain in depth 

 or meaning by logical distinctions which we may learn, 



