Page:The Source and Aim of Human Progress.djvu/62

58 pet view, or because they fall in line with his previous works, or because in sheer desperation of finding a sure, true, definite path in the jungle of facts he decides to adhere to one course and follow up one trail which may be entirely misleading and end in a blind alley from which he must once more retrace his steps, and start all over again. Of all that the true investigator must be acutely conscious, if he wishes to track the truth. The truly indefatigable and earnest investigator must be keenly conscious of failures, shortcomings, both of method and result. He must look at his truth as if about to be false, and at falsehood as if about to be true. Everything is relative, and nothing is final. It is only by such an attitude of mind and such a mode of procedure that truth can be attained.

If ceaseless vigilance is the price of liberty, more so is it true that ceaseless criticism of ever new opinions and ever new views, however distasteful, bizarre, and paradoxical, is the price of truth. For we must keep in mind the fact that truth does not come as deus ex machina or like Athena out of the head of Zeus; but must be found after persistent, laborious, painstaking searching of heart, mind, and fact. Truth is in the deep, as a Greek sage puts it. One must dive again and again often bringing up nothing but brilliant falsehoods before the homely truths are found.

It is by a devious course of long search and patient testing of apparent truths and falsehoods that the investigator may be assured that he has got a hold of the truth, and even then he must be constantly on the look-out never to relinquish a re-examination of it so as to gain an understanding of its actual relationships, of its limitations and relativity that the truth may not slip away after all by a dogmatic position and by the neglect of circumstances and unforseen conditions which he may have omitted to take into consideration, or by not bringing it into line with work and discoveries in other directions. By over-generalizing he may lose much that is vital in the truth and thus lay more stress on the false than on the true. Recent ruthless criticism of all that is dogmatic in Mathematics, Logic, Physics, Biology, and other sciences have resulted in new points of view and in the opening of new horizons for investigations which have revolutionized the sciences themselves. This sense of ceaseless active criticism must be kept alive and keen, if science and truth are to keep on advancing. It is due to this critical sense turned on the fundamental principles and postulates of science that such phenomenal progress has been made recently in the domain of science and human thought. This critical sense must be kept fresh