the name of truth, holds on its way. Sound philosophy has the wisdom of timidity, regards the unfortunateness of a result as a probable disproof, and carefully reasons back to the deficiency or error contained in the data" (p. 206). . . . "If philosophy is pressing hard on long established and current opinion, it is doing so by virtue of some extreme premise or sophistical method and not simply by the reserved force of truth" (p. 207). Leaving out of consideration the question-begging character of the terms, "facts in human life," "error," and "deficiency," in the above quotations, I would point out, (I) that while a philosophical system may be inadequate because of its failure to explain facts, as a theory it can never be contradictory of them. Philosophy attempts to interpret facts by exhibiting their ultimate relations to all other facts, and its conclusions may conflict with our own naive, uncritical convictions regarding the meaning of those facts. We are surely justified in holding that the final outcome of our thinking, what we cannot help believing in the end after attempting to see each part in the light of the whole, must be truer than our conception of the isolated fact from which we set out; (2) The conflict of any philosophical doctrine with "long established and current opinion" does not necessarily imply any deficiency or error in the data. "The unfortunateness of a result" has nothing to do with its truth or falsity. To refrain from drawing a conclusion which is forced upon us by reason is a piece of intellectual dishonesty. This argument has been used too long in the defense of dogma by those who feel that they are in some way or other responsible for the world.
The dangers to which such a position inevitably lead are well exemplified on almost every page of this book. I cannot refrain from quoting one or two passages. "In spite of all the ingenuities of language, in spite of all its confusions, the fundamental assertion of Spinoza flatly and extendedly [what does 'extendedly' mean?] contradicts experience, and so subverts the first terms of thought that are wrought into the entire framework of knowledge." "To identify extension and thought, matter and mind, as co-equal and co-eternal attributes of one substance, virtually wipes the board clean of all we have hitherto traced upon it, and leaves us to begin anew the problem of philosophy" (pp. 189, 190). . . . "The assertion that form-elements pertain to the mind and not to the things known, is made in opposition to universal conviction and so breaks down our just faith in our powers. No philosophy is at liberty to invalidate the normal action of the mind. The conclusion that knowledge is subjective in its forms is equally opposed to popular and scientific conviction. What is it in astronomy that we are measuring? Spaces, times, not dimensions of a mental form-element. How otherwise can we understand the exactitude and perfect agreement of these measurements?" (p. 388). As a further example of Professor Bascom's rhetoric, we may quote the following:—"It is playing fast and loose with the idea of space which enables the mind to entertain the notion of a spiritual monad and to assign it position in that portion of the brain without fibres; as if thereby there should be
