Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/139

No. 2.] The very differences of belief become significant when they can be referred to varying conditions which have brought them about.

Just one word on the practical side. The common and rigidly fixed content gives no help regarding the future. It gives no indication of the method of progress in any desired direction. There is no way of turning it over into a mode of control of future experience, either in corporate action or individual education. It is just a bare isolated final fact. If any use at all could be made of it, the tendency would be to lower the working standard of moral action in all more advanced societies. By hypothesis, it furnishes only the duty which is common to the lowest with the highest. The essence of moral struggle and of moral progress lies, however, precisely in that region where sections of society, or groups of individuals, are becoming conscious of the necessity of ideals of a higher and more generalized order than those recognized in the past. To fix upon that which has been believed everywhere, and at all times "as the essential content of the moral law," would give practical morality a tremendous set-back.

The previous discussion may be summarized as follows: The object of science is primarily to give intellectual control—that is, ability to interpret phenomena—and secondarily, practical control—that is, ability to secure desirable and avoid undesirable future experiences. Second, experiment accomplishes this in physical sciences. It takes an unanalyzed total fact which in its totality must simply be accepted at its face value, and shows the exact and exclusive conditions of its origin. By this means it takes it out of its opaque isolation and gives it meaning by presenting it as a distinct and yet related part of a larger historic continuum. Third, the discovery of the process becomes at once an instrument for the interpretation of other facts which are explainable by reference to the process operating under somewhat different conditions. Fourth, the significance of conscious or spiritual values cannot be made out by direct inspection, nor yet by direct physical dissection and recomposition. They are, therefore, outside the scope of science except so far as amenable to historic method. Fifth, history gives us these facts in process of becoming or