SECTION 20. STUDIES PREPARATORY TO ALL INVESTIGATIONS. 191 



The most signal example, however, of this delusion is, perhaps, 

 Auguste Comte, one of the deepest and sincerest thinkers of 

 modern times. In him dwelt an imperturbable faith that he 

 had laid bare in all their essentials, and beyond the possibility 

 of a doubt, the nature of scientific thought and the course of 

 mankind's past, as well as the contemporary and the ultimate 

 stages of man's progress. Although he believed that he was 

 the first to recognise clearly the fact of human progress, he 

 confidently sketched in minute detail the final regime, and 

 though he placed humanity skies high above the individual, 

 he proceeded as if henceforth nothing remained for humanity 

 to do but to accept his explanations and to execute his schemes. 



Now these four justly famous thinkers are typical exemplifica- 

 tions of the assurance with which, in their naivete, philosophers 

 generally speak, even though a study of history renders it 

 evident that such pretensions are, to say the least, painfully 

 exaggerated. 



In the humbler sphere of observation, as we have endeavoured 

 to show (Section III; see also Conclusion 23), we encounter the 

 same fact. Men are convinced that they have exhausted classes 

 of facts and conditions, when all they have often accomplished 

 is fastidiously to pick and choose their evidence, and to 

 misconstrue inconvenient facts where it is not possible to dis- 

 regard them altogether. It is this psychological bias also 

 which, in spite of serious contradictions in the world of ex- 

 perience, fortifies the believers in widely differing religious 

 faiths. 



The explanation we venture to advance is as follows. The 

 process of thought depends on the desire to arrive at some 

 particular conclusion. 1 When, then, we have habituated our- 

 selves to view with favour a certain theory and to be indifferent 

 or hostile to another that is, when the mind is concentrated 

 or set on a certain theory associations connected with the 

 favoured theory tend alone to be formed or entertained. 

 Moreover, any stray counter-evidence will be discounted on 

 superficial deliberation, whilst even direct observation of an 

 embarrassing character will be materially falsified by our 

 warped intelligence. So potent is this psychological force that 

 a subtle special pleader may for a time compel our unwilling 

 thought to run along his rails, and prevent us from thinking 

 of anything which would controvert what he advances. This 

 process grows by what it feeds on, and thus abundance of 

 favourable evidence, of a dubious kind frequently, and scarcely 

 any opposed thereto, however sound, comes to be stored in 

 our minds, and hence there is artificially created a conviction 

 of absolute certainty which, in not a few instances, is as 

 absolutely unwarranted. Habit accentuates this tendency to 



1 G. Spiller, The Mind of Man, ch. 4. 



