Page:Educational Review Volume 23.djvu/43

 minded are the Hellenes, and the others are the barbaroi. And rightly so; for the credentials of our sovereignty are the rewards of generations of patient study of the ways of nature, sanctioned by the logical anticipation of natural events, by the practical utilization of natural principles, by a conscientious, impartial, and objective analysis of our own mental processes. For the scepter in the hands of science is neither a symbol of wanton authority, nor a badge of unearned privilege, nor a license for extravagance and caprice, but an emblem of law and order—safeguarding to all the most cherished opportunities for right knowledge, right beliefs, and right actions, in what measure each is wise enough to consent to be thus governed. It is the prerogative of the scientific method that it enthrones the logical right—the true—as the moral law within enthrones the ethical right—the good. The crowning virtue becomes not conviction, nor the approval of authority, nor acceptability, nor general credence, but provability. The adoption of this as our sovereign method alters our ideals, even where it modifies but little our practices; it radically transforms our belief-attitude and our outlook, even tho we cannot as yet apply the one nor enter into possession of the other.

Yet we must not complacently assume that the advantages are exclusively incorporated with the one method, or that its adoption is unencumbered with conflict and sacrifice. We shall continue to feel the natural proneness to shape our beliefs by other and less strenuous standards; we are unwilling to, and we need not, abate our appreciation of what the other methods have accomplished in the trials and tribulations of the past. We cannot lightly shake off the tenacity of our convictions, however obtained, nor the inertia that easily, and the incapacity that necessarily, appeals to authority; we shall continue to yearn to believe what is agreeable and to resist unpleasant truths; we may still reserve some corner of our belief-chamber which shall be exempt from the intrusion of inquiry; but, on the whole, however we may defend these tendencies, or apologize for them, or struggle against them, we make some decent attempt to clothe them with the semblance of plausibility and to present them garbed in fashion scientific. “Yes,” Mr. Peirce admits,