22 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



the rattles of immature intellects, but the ad- 

 vanced reasons have outgrown them." 



"The longer I live," Huxley said, "the more 

 obvious it is to me that the most sacred act 

 of a man's life is to say and feel, 'I believe such 

 and such to be true.' All the greatest rewards 

 and all the heaviest penalties of existence cling 

 about that act." 



CAUTIOUSNESS OF STATEMENT. Following from 

 the passion for facts, there is a second char- 

 acteristic of the scientific mood, namely, cau- 

 tiousness. It has habituated itself to withhold 

 judgment when the data are obviously incom- 

 plete; to doubt conclusions that have been quickly 

 reached; to hesitate in accepting what is particu- 

 larly attractive whether in its simplicity or its 

 symmetry. Thus scientific workers are naturally 

 sceptical and of the school of St. Thomas which 

 is in no way inconsistent with a tenacity of con- 

 viction when the demonstration is complete. 

 Not any easier than accuracy is this quality 

 of active scepticism, "thatige Skepsis." Indeed, 

 as Prof. W. K. Brooks says in his Foundations 

 of Zoology: "The hardest of intellectual virtues 

 is philosophic doubt, and the mental vice to which 

 we are most prone is our tendency to believe 

 that lack of evidence for an opinion is a reason 

 fo? believing something else." . . . "Suspended 

 judgment is the greatest triumph of intellectual 



