450 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 510. 



that belong to our division is this : We are 

 all concerned with what may be called ideal 

 truth, as distinct from physical truth. 

 Some of us also have a strong interest in 

 physical truth; but none of us lack a no- 

 table and scientific concern for the realm of 

 ideas, viewed as ideas. 



Let me explain what I mean by these 

 terms. Whoever studies physical truth 

 (taking that term in its most general sense) 

 seeks to observe, to collate and, in the end, to 

 control, facts which he reg'ards as external 

 to his own thought. But instead of thus 

 looking mainly without, it is possible for 

 a man chiefly to take account, let us say, 

 of the consequences of his own hypothetical 

 assumptions— assumptions which may pos- 

 sess but a very remote relation to the phys- 

 ical world. Or again, it is possible for 

 such a student to be mainly devoted to 

 reflecting upon the formal validity of his 

 own inferences, or upon the meaning of 

 his own presuppositions, or upon the value 

 and the interrelation of hiunan ideals. Any 

 such scientific work, reflective, considerate 

 principally of the thinker's own construe- ' 

 tions and purposes, or of the constructions 

 and purposes of humanity in general, is a 

 pursuit of ideal truth. The searcher who 

 is mainly devoted to the inquiry into what 

 he regards as external facts, is indeed ac- 

 tive; but his activity is molded by an 

 order of existence which he conceives as 

 complete apart from his activity. He is 

 thoughtful ; but a power not himself assigns 

 to him the problems about which he thinks. 

 He is guided by ideals; but his principal 

 ideal takes the form of an acceptance of the 

 world as it is, independently of his ideals. 

 His dealings are with nature. His aim is 

 the conquest of a foreign realm. But the 

 student of what may be called, in general 

 terms, ideal truth, while he is devoted as 

 his fellow, the observer of outer nature, to 

 the general purpose of being faithful to the 

 verity as he finds it, is still aware that his 



own way of finding, or his own creative 

 activity as an inventor of hypotheses, or his 

 own powers of inference, or his conscious 

 ideals, constitute in the main the object 

 into which he is inquiring, and so form an 

 essential aspect of the sort of verity which 

 he is endeavoring to discover. The guide, 

 then, of such a student is, in a peculiar 

 sense, his own reason. His goal is the com- 

 prehension of his own meaning, the con- 

 scious and thoughtful conquest of himself. 

 His great enemy is not the mystery of outer 

 nature, but the imperfection of his reflect- 

 ive powers. He is, indeed, as vinwilling as 

 is any scientific worker to trust his private 

 caprices. He feels as little as does the ob- 

 server of outer facts, that he is merely no- 

 ting down, as they pass, the chance products 

 of his arbitrary fantasy. For him, as for 

 any scientific student, truth is indeed ob- 

 jective; and the standards to which he 

 conforms are eternal. But his method is 

 that of an inner considerateness rather than 

 of a curiosity about external phenomena. 

 His objective world is at the same time 

 an essentially ideal world, and the eternal 

 verity in whose light he seeks to live has, 

 throughout his undertakings, a peculiarly 

 intimate relation to the purposes of his 

 own constructive will. 



One may then sum up the difference of 

 attitude which is here in question by saying 

 that, while the student of outer nature is 

 explicitly conforming his plans of action, 

 his ideas, his ideals, to an order of truth 

 which he takes to be foreign to himself — 

 the student of the other sort of truth, here 

 especially in question, is attempting to un- 

 derstand his own plans of action, that is, 

 to develop his ideas, or to define his ideals, 

 or else to do both these things. 



Now it is not hard to see that this search 

 for some sort of ideal truth is indeed char- 

 acteristic of every one of the investigations 

 which have been ' grouped together in our 

 division of the normative sciences. Pure 



