Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/79

Rh they should do so. The most serious source of error in the development of the earth-sciences, in my judgment, is our relative neglect to probe fundamental conceptions and to recognize the extent to which they influence the most common observations and interpretations. We need a method of thought that shall keep us alive to these basal considerations. To this end I believe it to be conducive to soundness of intellectual procedure to regard our whole system of interpretation as but an effort to develop a consistent system of workable hypotheses. I think we should do well to abandon all claims that we are reaching absolute truth, in the severest sense of that phrase, and content ourselves with the more modest effort to work out a system of interpretation which shall approve itself in practise under such tests as human powers can devise. Wherein lie

I believe they lie essentially in the working quality. Whatever conforms thoroughly to the working requirements of nature probably corresponds essentially to the absolute truth, though it may be much short of the full truth. That may be accepted, for the time being, as true which duly approves itself under all tests, as though it were true. Whenever it seems to fail under test in any degree, confidence is to be withdrawn in equal degree, and a rectification of conceptions sought. This may well hold for all conceptions, however fundamental, whether they relate to the physical, the vital, or the mental phenomena which the earth presents. Let us entirely abandon the historic effort of the metaphysicians to build an inverted pyramid on an apex of axioms assumed to be incontestable truth, and let us rear our superstructure on the results of working trials applied as widely and as severely as possible. Let us seek our foundation in the broadest possible contact with phenomena. I hold that the working test when brought to bear in its fullest, most intimate and severest forms is the supreme criterion of that which should stand to us for truth. Our interpretative effort should, therefore, be to organize a complete set of working hypotheses for all phenomena, physical, vital and mental, so far as appropriate to our sphere of research. These should be at once the basis of our philosophy and of our science. These hypotheses should be constantly revised, extended and elaborated by all available means, and should be tested continually by every new relation which comes into view, until the crucial trials shall become as the sands of the sea for multitude and their severity shall have no bounds but the limits of human capacity. That which under this prolonged ordeal shall give the highest grounds of assurance may stand to us for science, that which shall rest more upon inference than upon the firmer modes of determination may stand to us for our philosophy, while that which lies beyond these, as something doubtless always will, may stand to us for the working material of the future.