386 Ethical Fanctions of Scientific Study — Chamberlin. 
This is indeed an ideal attitude. No one fully attains to it, 
no one is entirely free from the influence of predisposition. 
Complete impartiality is divine, not human. He who claims 
absolute freedom from bias deceives himself. He who does not 
recognize the prejudices of his own mind becomes to that ex- 
tent untrustworthy. The nearest approach to complete equi- 
poise is attained when the mind, by earnest endeavor, frees itself 
to the utmost from the conditions that predispose it to partiality 
and constrains itself to the utmost to act with judicial fairness, 
and then, having done all to be impartial, measures up, so far 
as it may, its own bias and discounts its conclusions accordingly. 
It requires an almost preternatural self-inspection and a lofty 
moral courage to systematically discount one's own work for 
one's own persistent errors. It crucifies the natural pride to 
turn upon one's self the same severe probing for weakness that 
one applies to others. 
The astronomers, geodesists and other precise observers have 
set us an example worthy of imitation in all departments of 
thought . It is their practice to ascertain by careful tests their 
habitual errors, and then to correct their results as conscientiously 
for their own personal defects as for the systematic errors of 
their instruments. This application of the personal equation 
should be extended beyond the field of observation and applied 
to all impressions, inferences, interpretations, inductions and 
opinions. It is indeed less easy to determine the personal error 
in these more recondite and complex processes of the mind, but 
the effect is none the less wholesome, none the less important 
to trustworthy results. 
These are some of the dominant traits of mind that mark 
creative scholarship: to love the truth supremely, to seek the 
truth assiduously, to scrutinize evidence rigorously, to withhold 
judgment when evidence is insufficient, to look upon all sides 
equally, to judge with impartiality, and to make conscien- 
tious corrections for personal bias. 
I have sketched these qualities as they are involved in pioneer 
research, but they are, or should be, equally involved in the 
training of the university student whose work may be but 
gjiase'-original. The school work may be only secondary or 
imitative research, but it may and should have in itself all the 
essential qualities of original investigation. The minor prob- 
