METHOD OF MULTIPLE WORKING HYPOTHESES 843 
become a ruling passion very much as in the other. The his- 
torical antecedents and the moral atmosphere associated with 
the working hypothesis lend some good influence however 
toward the preservation of its integrity. 
Conscientiously followed, the method of the working hypoth- 
esis is an incalculable advance upon the method of the ruling 
theory; but it has some serious defects. One of these takes 
concrete form, as just noted, in the ease with which the hypoth- 
esis becomes a controlling idea. To avoid this grave danger, the 
method of multiple working hypotheses is urged. It differs 
from the simple working hypothesis in that it distributes the 
effort and divides the affections. It is thus in some measure 
protected against the radical defect of the two other methods. 
In developing the multiple hypotheses, the effort is to bring up 
into view every rational explanation of the phenomenon in hand 
and to develop every tenable hypothesis relative to its nature, 
cause or origin, and to give to all of these as impartially as pos- 
sible a working form and a due place in the investigation. The 
investigator thus becomes the parent of a family of hypotheses ; 
and by his parental relations to all is morally forbidden to fasten 
his affections unduly upon any one. In the very nature of the 
case, the chief danger that springs from affection is counter- 
acted. Where some of the hypotheses have been already pro- 
posed and used, while others are the investigator’s own creation. 
a natural difficulty arises, but the right use of the method requires 
the impartial adoption of all alike into the working family. The 
investigator thus at the outset puts himself in cordial sympathy 
and in parental relations (of adoption, if not of authorship, ) with 
every hypothesis that is at all applicable to the case under inves- 
tigation. Having thus neutralized so far as may be the partiali- 
ties of his emotional nature, he proceeds with a certain natural 
and enforced erectness of mental attitude to the inquiry, know- 
ing well that some of his intellectual children (by birth or adop- 
tion) must needs perish before maturity, but yet with the hope 
that several of them may survive the ordeal of crucial research, 
since it often proves in the end that several agencies were con- 
