20 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



the most complete illustration of which we are aware is to be 

 found in the second part of the Discourse on Method. The very 

 first reflection which is there recorded is upon the fact, "that there 

 is seldom so much perfection in works composed of many separate 

 parts, upon which different hands have been employed, as in 

 those completed by a single master." This might be seen in 

 buildings, cities, religions, and civil constitutions. The same is 

 true of the "sciences contained in books" at least the non- 

 mathematical sciences. And finally the very development of 

 each one of us from infancy is a 'most unfortunate necessity. 

 "It is almost impossible that our judgments can be so correct 

 and solid as they would have been, had our reason been mature 

 from the moment of our birth, and had we always been guided 

 by it alone." It is under the influence of this reflection that he 

 determines upon a clean sweep of his previously entertained opin- 

 ions, and that he adopts as the first maxim of his future scientific 

 endeavors: "never to accept anything for true which I did not 

 clearly know to be such." 



Among empiricists the same blindness to the possibility of a 

 true evolution of knowledge prevails. "Nothing," says Hume, 

 "is more usual and more natural for those who pretend to dis- 

 cover anything new to the world in philosophy and the sciences, 

 than to insinuate the praises of their own systems, by decrying 

 all those which have been advanced before them." 1 This attitude 

 is typical of pre-evolutionary thought; and Hume does not deny 

 that it is substantially his own. He is only concerned to excuse 

 the implied effrontery of his new pretensions. And his excuse 

 is the usual one. He has found a new mode of attack, a new 

 avenue of approach ; he is applying new methods, or is radically 

 enlarging the scope of old ones. Thus he hopes to succeed where 

 others have failed. That his own philosophy is an almost in- 

 evitable outgrowth of the speculations of Locke, Berkeley, and 

 Hutcheson, he does not for a moment suspect. 



The certainty of immediate experience "seeing is believing"- 



1 Treatise of Human Nature, Introduction. 



