We are told that the scientific method is
ultimately appropriate only to the abstractions of mathematics. But
nature herself seems to have a taste for mathematical methods. A sane
idealism believes that the eternal verities are adumbrated, not
travestied, in the phenomenal world, and does not forget how much of
what we call observation of nature is demonstrably the work of mind.
The world as known to science is itself a spiritual world from which
certain valuations are, for special purposes, excluded. To deny the
authority of the discursive reason, which has its proper province in
this sphere, is to destroy the possibility of all knowledge. Nor can
we, without loss and danger, or instinct or intuition above reason.
Instinct is a faculty which belongs to unprogressive species. It is
necessarily unadaptable and unable to deal with any new situation.
Consecrated custom may keep Chinese civilisation safe in a state of
torpid immobility for five thousand years; but fifty years of Europe
will achieve more, and will at last present Cathay with the
alternative of moving on or moving off. Instinct might lead us on if
progress were an automatic law of nature, but this belief, though
widely held, is sheer superstition.
We have to convert the public mind in this country to faith in trained
and disciplined reason. We have to convince our fellow-citizens not
only that the duty of self-preservation requires us to be mentally as
well equipped as the French, Germans and Americans, but that a trained
intelligence is in itself "more precious than rubies.
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