70 



INTRODUCTION. 



18. 

 Some in- 

 terests or 

 objects of 

 thought are 

 personal or 

 subjective. 



19. 



Agreement 

 on these 

 matters 

 impossible. 



altogether. But so far as the matter under treatment is 

 concerned, a clearer division is possible. Science deals 

 with all such things or objects of thought as are common 

 to a great many persons and under certain circumstances 

 are accessible to everybody : it thus claims that its ob- 

 servations and reasonings can be checked and submitted to 

 repeated examination and verification ; so that a large por- 

 tion of them can always be regarded as settled and agreed 

 upon, and can be taken for granted and used as a secure 

 foundation by those persons who are themselves unable or 

 unwilling to go through the process of verification. But 

 there are a great many things and interests which centre 

 in the individual mind of each person which are, in fact, 

 personal, individual, or subjective. They are to all of us 

 just as important as the others. They form the real sub- 

 ject-matter of all that thought which is separated from 

 science, and in its very nature and aspect opposed to it. 

 In this great province of thought one person cannot do 

 the work for many in the same way as is possible in 

 science. Proof is almost impossible, and agreement refers 

 always only to a certain number of persons. Doctrines or 

 theories in this region of thought cannot be accepted and 

 taken for granted as they are in science, but every person 

 must go over the same ground for himself before he has 

 any right to accept or make use of what is given to him. 

 The real and true character of all this thought is that it 

 is individual and personal, whereas all scientific thought 

 whatever its origin may be must be general and im- 

 personal. At the extreme end of thought in one direction 

 are placed the mathematical sciences, at the extreme end 

 in the other lies religion. Disagreement in the former is 



