Article December 23, 1905 Issue

The Belief in a Human Mind

FRANK H. SPRAGUE.

The apotheosis of the so-called scientific spirit has been a distinctive feature of the thought of the century just closed. Within that period the application of the inductive method has been so extended as to embrace within its scope every conceivable field of research and experimentation.

Although for several decades the impulses and tendencies which have found their fulfilment in this intellectual awakening have been the most potent factors in shaping the educational and social ideals of western civilization, indications of the passing of certain phases of thought peculiar to this epoch are already at hand. Representative thinkers are beginning to acknowledge that these influences have failed to reveal a satisfactory solution of the fundamental problems of existence, or an adequate explanation of many of the more important aspects of human experience. Under a searching scrutiny the modes and methods of this type of thought are found merely to satisfy the demands of a transient phase of human inquiry.

In all theories and systems resting on an empirical foundation, the center of gravity tends to fall without the base and precipitate their downfall; for without a recognition of the plumb-line of Truth, no available standard is known by which the vagaries and aberrations of human speculation may be corrected.

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