16 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 340. 



not contribute much that is positive and 

 progressive. To the question, for example, 

 about lower organisms showing purpose 

 or social feeling in their activity the 

 scientist may answer no and be quite em- 

 phatic in his answer too, but almost at 

 once he will appreciate that mankind, when 

 scrutinized in the same way, is similarly 

 deficient; and then somehow the wind is 

 taken out of his sails, since purpose and 

 social feeling are not to be so easily dis- 

 posed of, and the question of fact simply re- 

 turns for another reckoning, with Shelley's 

 cloud, silently laughing at its own cenotaph. 

 And what is the difficulty ? The difficulty 

 is in the assumption that purpose or social 

 feeling is a fixed conception, so fixed and 

 SO well known that its presence or absence 

 can be established by an experiment or two 

 on strictly objective principles. No con- 

 ception is fixed, and a science that enter- 

 tains a question of fact with its ' either this 

 or nob this,' ^either that or not that,' 

 simply needs to betray its objectivism suffi- 

 ciently to recognize that no conception is 

 fixed, and to recognize at the same time — for 

 this is directly implied — that any division 

 of the things of the world into a and not-a 

 or b and not-6 is necessarily artificial. In 

 a real universe everything must be true of 

 everything, nothing can be what anything 

 else is not. Let science recognize these 

 things and it will promptly exchange its 

 external objective question of fact for direct 

 internal questions of meaning. Thus, for 

 one of the cases in hand, not Are low organ- 

 isms social or purposive, but What do they 

 testify as to the real nature of society or of 

 purpose? Being subject to the principle, 

 which I but just now referred to and which 

 I think is not to be gainsaid, that in a real 

 universe everything must be true of every- 

 thing, that a real universe is really indi- 

 visible, the things of man's experience, 

 whatever they be, must always be means to 

 man's understanding of himself, not the 



affairs of an wholly objective science. 

 What they are not, he is not ; what they 

 are, he is. So, instead of denying purpose 

 or social feeling, or even of assuming the 

 possibility of their denial to lower organ- 

 isms, science should simply seize the op- 

 portunity vi^hich its experiments afford of a 

 clearer definition of purpose or society. 

 Thus the experiments seem to show, not 

 that there is no purposive activity or social 

 life in low organisms, but that purpose 

 itself, wherever exhibited, is only the 

 urgency of expressing an existing adapta- 

 tion, an adaptation that is at once realized 

 and even consciously appreciated. A purely 

 objective science could never assume the 

 standpoint here illustrated, but a progres- 

 sive science, a science for which let us say 

 knowledge is as much a reaction as an 

 action, a reflection as an observation, can 

 take no other. 



The conservatism of objective science or 

 the viewpoint in its questions of fact, which 

 the conservatism determines, is the chief 

 reason for the negative attitude of science, 

 so often an object oi just complaint. Thus, 

 to use still another illustration, for science to 

 assume that God either is or is not, because 

 He must either be or not be what men have 

 thought Him, is simply to beg the theological 

 question altogether, and true science, or at 

 least true thinking, cannot be and should 

 not be identified with such question-beg- 

 ging. Thus, for science's question of fact, 

 a negative answer is a foregone conclusion, 

 inasmuch as the very fact of the question is 

 evidence that a new idea of God is only just 

 below, if not already on the horizon of 

 man's consciousness. What, therefore, we 

 should ask is, not Is God ? but simply and 

 candidly. What is He f The business of sci- 

 ence is to accept and interpret experience, 

 not to question its very reality. 



But, secondly, there is scientific special- 

 ism, a natural concomitant of objectiv- 

 ism, since the objective as innocent of all 



