INTRODUCTORY 151 



true, and even final, as a description of a partial aspect; 

 but it becomes a caricature of truth, and false, when 

 interpreted as sufficient by itself for an adequate phil- 

 osophy. The truest conclusions of induction, whether 

 in physical or in theological science, are what the late 

 J. B. Mozley called incipient truths.^ That is, they 

 define a knowledge which is true so far as it goes, but 

 which ends in mystery, and is therefore true only when 

 the larger mystery is tacitly recognized as Kmiting the 

 sufficiency of our conclusions. This is not to nullify 

 them, nor is it to reduce them to a purely subjective 

 or relative value. The knowledge which they define is 

 objective knowledge, but it is partial and incipient. If 

 treated otherwise, and used as the basis of absolute 

 systems of philosophy, it becomes one-sided, in the 

 invidious sense of that term, and misleading. The 

 best physical scientists recognize that their conclu- 

 sions run into mystery, and that the mystery which 

 surrounds the very fragmentary propositions of nat- 

 ural science is fully as great as that which envelops the 

 doctrines of Christianity.^ 



Now the unknown is much more extensive than the 

 known. It is so extensive, indeed, that we are often 

 quite baffled in our attempts to harmonize proposi- 



1 Predestination, ch. ii., init. Cf. the author's Introd. to Dog. 

 TheoL, pp. 170-179, on cathoHc balance. 



'^ "But beyond the bright search-lights of science, 

 Out of sight of the windows of sense, 

 Old riddles still bid us defiance, 

 Old questions of why and whence." 

 W. C. D. Whetham, Recent Devel. of Phys. Science, p. 10. 



