July 5, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



15 



ticism and theology on the one hand and 

 practical religion on the other and the close 

 analogy between the two must help to 

 emphasize the danger of the purism, which 

 is the objectivism and technique of science, 

 without seriously reflecting on its useful- 

 ness. 



But besides burying science in technique, 

 objectivism involves a most interesting ex- 

 pression of conservatism. I am not now 

 thiuking of the double truth or the double 

 life which it sanctions so cordiallj^ that men 

 can entertain advanced scientific doctrines 

 without feeling them in any serious conflict 

 with the traditional fSaehings of religion 

 and morality, but something else, perhaps 

 not wholly unrelated to this, is in my mind. 

 Thus, while science is commonly supposed to 

 be advanced and ' up to date,' if anything is, 

 it is so only in a way that needs to be very 

 carefully qualified, for it manages to per- 

 petuate not indeed the letter, but still the 

 spirit of old views. Certainly a purely ob- 

 jective science can at best only give a new 

 material content to existing and time-worn 

 forms of thought; it cannot do that in which 

 progress must alwaj'S consist, namely, de- 

 velop and adopt new forms of thought, new 

 categories ; it cannot do this without be- 

 traying its objectivism. Objective science, 

 for example, has said, relatively to a certain 

 doctrine of creation, that spirit did not pre- 

 cede matter in time, but instead matter pre- 

 ceded spirit, and, except for the excitement 

 of the drawn battle which this startling as- 

 sertion has precipitated, it can hardly be 

 said to have involved any great advance. 

 Also, while deposing the First Cause, an 

 objective science has made all things causes 

 after the same plan, individual, arbitrary, 

 antecedent causes, and this is only to mul- 

 tiply indefinitely, perhaps infinitely, the of- 

 fensive creationalism. Not so, some one ob- 

 jects, since it involves a great deal more 

 than mere multiplication, for by making 

 all things causes it brings into science the 



important principle of the equation of action 

 and reaction, a principle which, turning 

 creationalism fatally against itself, yields the 

 new standpoint of mechanicalism . Readily 

 I grant this, but a purely objective science 

 has no right to any such development; a 

 purely objective science has no right ever 

 to change its standpoint. 



Perhaps this does not mean very much. 

 Then let us approach the matter in another 

 way, risking a reference to one of science's 

 pet conceits, the familiar ' question of fact. ' 

 It has been for science a ' question of fact ' 

 whether matter made mind or mind made 

 matter, whether this or that thing is or is 

 not a cause of some other thing, whether 

 certain very low, mayhap unicellular or- 

 ganisms, show purpose in their activities or 

 do not, are gifted with a natural tendency 

 to social life, a real interest in their kind, 

 or are not so gifted, or — to take one more 

 case — whether the changes in the brain that 

 precede bodily movements are or are not 

 directed by consciousness, consciousness be- 

 ing in the one case in causal relation with 

 the brain and in the other only an idle ex- 

 ternal accompaniment, an ' epiphenome- 

 non ' — but in each one of these questions 

 of fact we can see how the scientist is given 

 to standing in his own light, obscuring the 

 view of what he above all others ought to 

 see. Are mind and matter, cause and 

 effect, purpose, society, brain-process and 

 consciousness such well-established con- 

 ceptions, as if independent constants in the 

 scientist's formulae, that mere external 

 questions of fact can be asked about them ? 

 Why, when one really thinks about it, to 

 assume, as questions of fact are usually 

 made to assume, such is their natural ob- 

 jectivism, that anything either is or is not 

 something else, is about as blinding and as 

 ill-advised as could well be. It keeps the 

 scientist busy no doubt, eternally busy, as 

 busy as the sportive cat that so hotly pur- 

 sues her own caudal extremity, but it does 



