216 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



school of science should feel like spewing such 

 subjectivism out of their mouths?" We must 

 remember, however, James's subsequent conclu- 

 sion that "our passional nature not only lawfully 

 may, but must, decide an option between prop- 

 ositions, whenever it is a genuine option that 

 cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual 

 grounds.'* 



Our own position is this. Science seeks to 

 answer certain kinds of questions in regard to 

 Nature and Man and the history of both. These 

 answers are very far from being complete, for 

 the world is very large and science is very young. 

 But even if the answers were as complete all 

 round as they are already in parts, and if there 

 were also answers to all the scientific questions 

 which we do not yet foresee nor know how to ask, 

 yet they would not be of a kind to satisfy the 

 whole nature of the ordinary man. We get hints 

 of complementary answers in poetic and religious 

 feeling, and we see no reason to believe that the 

 only approach to Truth or Reality is by the scien- 

 tific method. The satisfaction we reach in poetic 

 and religious feeling is transcendental, on a 

 different plane from scientific satisfaction. It 

 is unverifiable, incommunicable, mystical, but 

 for ourselves true. In its mystical character 

 there is danger, but the safeguard is in steadying 

 the mind with Science and Philosophy with 



