Page:On an Evolutionist Theory of Axioms.djvu/18

11 At best it would be a matter for resignation and not for gratitude. We may bow to it as an inevitable decree of nature; we deceive ourselves if we say we can see it is good and desirable. The pessimist would find another instance of Nature's unkindness. Even where she seems to confer a benefit, she has done us a deep injury. She has mutilated our minds with a refinement of cruelty. For instead of mercifully concealing a loss which could only be deplored and never repaired, she has evolved the philosophy which has betrayed the secret.

And is there really any compensation?

If we have gained a belief which happens to be true, can we be said to understand it if we ground it on a falsehood? Can we be said to 'know' at all in the proper sense of the word?

Can a belief be even intelligent which is simply caused by the want of a power to think otherwise, a power which might have been developed, and is lost to us by a process as unconscious as that which deprives us of taste or smell when we have a cold?

In ordinary life, when we are not philosophising we have a great contempt for beliefs which are merely the result of imperfect mental development; we expect them among savage tribes, the prejudiced, and the uneducated.

An attempt has been made to remove a bias in favour of the evolution theory. If the attempt were successful, it must be admitted that it would create a bias against the theory: and there is all the more reason to try to take a purely scientific attitude, and ask whether we have to believe whether we like it or not.

In the first place attention must be expressly called to the fact that this is a theory of knowledge. It does not explain merely how we come by a belief, but how that belief is true; that is how we have knowledge.

I will read a passage to make this clear:—