RATIONALISM AND SCIENCE 79 



reason greatly misled the Reformers of the six- 

 teenth century, making them develop rigid 

 schemes of theology almost regardless of the fact 

 that religious truth is relative, and belongs not 

 like mathematics to an abstract scheme of 

 thought, but to the ethical and practical side of 

 man. In a sense even the basest superstition has 

 some justification, for it could not have arisen but 

 for its satisfaction of some human need. But a 

 society is debased if it retains too long beliefs 

 suited to a barbarous age, but later tending to 

 dwarf the intelligence and fetter the freedom of 

 mankind. 



Nowhere better than in Huxley's essay upon 

 Descartes is expressed the growing conviction of 

 investigators that all knowledge has a base in 

 psychology, that every fact has a subjective 

 element, that nothing can be seen but in a human 

 mirror. The relativity of knowledge to the know- 

 ing mind is the truth which has altered the basis 

 of all such branches of study as have to do with 

 man's thought and feeling, aesthetics, religion, 

 even economics ; has destroyed their abstract and 

 rationalist character, and drawn them into the 

 ways of scientific method. 



Thirdly, there is the group of studies included 

 in sociology. In England in past days we made 

 the mistake of setting apart one class of social 

 phenomena, the facts of the production and dis- 

 tribution of wealth, and supposing that the Politi- 

 cal Economy which is concerned with these can 



