Every Work Of Science Great Enough To

Looking Out Of My Window This Lovely Spring Morning I See An Azalea In Full Bloom. No, No! I Do Not See That; Though That Is The Only Way I Can Describe What I See. That Is A Proposition, A Sentence, A Fact; But What I Perceive Is Not Proposition, Sentence, Fact, But Only An Image Which I Make Intelligible In Part By Means Of A Statement Of Fact. This Statement Is Abstract; But What I See Is Concrete.

Doubt Is An Uneasy And Dissatisfied State From Which We Struggle To Free Ourselves And Pass Into The State Of Belief; While The Latter Is A Calm And Satisfactory State Which We Do Not Wish To Avoid, Or To Change To A Belief In Anything Else.

Truth Is That Concordance Of An Abstract Statement With The Ideal Limit Towards Which Endless Investigation Would Tend To Bring Scientific Belief, Which Concordance The Abstract Statement May Possess By Virtue Of The Confession Of Its Inaccuracy And One-sidedness, And This Confession Is An Essential Ingredient Of Truth.

The A Priori Method Is Distinguished For Its Comfortable Conclusions. It Is The Nature Of The Process To Adopt Whatever Belief Weare Inclined To, And There Are Certain Flatteries To The Vanity Of Man Which We All Believe By Nature, Until We Are Awakened From Our Pleasing Dream By Rough Facts.

One Will Meet, For Example, The Virtual Assumption That What Is Relative To Thought Cannot Be Real. But Why Not, Exactly? Red Is Relative To Sight, But The Fact That This Or That Is In That Relation To Vision That We Call Being Red Is Not Itself Relative To Sight; It Is A Real Fact.