146 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



just because he knows that he is in danger of trusting it in the 

 particular instance. It is a bias to be allowed for, as far as 

 possible. We distrust our optimism, we distrust our partisan- 

 ship, we distrust our love of simplicity; otherwise we are less 

 competent as sociologists, as historians, or as physicists. Pre- 

 cisely the same is true of other sources of bias. 



5. Where individual precautions are insufficient to eliminate 

 the effects of bias, public discussion and criticism are expected 

 to carry the process further. As Mr. Titchener has recently said, 



-"Every one of us has his natural inclinations to overcome; 

 and if I lean towards sensationalism, why, the imageless minds, 

 the minds of the extreme verbal type, lean just as strongly in 

 the opposite direction. . . . Well! it is from the clash of these 

 individual psychologies that a generalized psychology must 

 arise." 1 Mr. James commits a double oversight when he writes : 

 "The potentest of all our premises is never mentioned." It is 

 true that it is not mentioned by the advocate, except where he 

 candidly distrusts himself; but this is because he believes he has 

 sufficiently discounted it. And there is little risk of its not being 

 mentioned by the other man. 



6. The distrust of individual bias, in oneself or others, is not a 

 recent phenomenon. It extends back to the beginnings of self- 

 conscious scientific endeavor. Among the fragments of Hera- 

 clitus we find : "Understanding is common to all. . . . And though 

 reason is common, most people live as though they had an under- 

 standing peculiar to themselves. . . . They that are awake have 

 one world in common, but of the sleeping each turns aside into a 

 world of his own. ... It is not meet to act and speak like men 

 asleep" (B. 91, 92, 94, 93; Fairbanks tr.). On the other hand, 

 it must be confessed, this sentiment is found to be more widely 

 spread and more powerful, as the advancement of science pro- 

 ceeds. Where science is so far undeveloped as to be closely 

 bound up with religious belief, or otherwise subject to religious 

 influence, trust in one's temperament is proportionately common. 



1 Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes, p. 22. 



