The Religious Mission of Sorrow

This chapter examines sorrow and the whole burden of human tribulation as a source of religious insight. The insight of which sorrow is the source is an insight that tends to awaken within a new view of what the spiritual realm is. This view is not in the least what some recent writers have blindly proclaimed it to be—a philosopher's artificial abstraction—a cruel effort to substitute a “soft” doctrine of the study for a moral and humane facing of the “hard” facts of human life. This view is the soul of the teaching of all the world's noblest and most practical guides to the most concrete living. This view faces hardness, it endures and overcomes. The chapter then considers why the existence of tragedy in human existence appears to many moods, and to many people, destructive of faith in any religious truth and a barrier against rational assurance regarding the ultimate triumph of anything good.

[The Methodology of Science]

This chapter focuses on the method of induction. The technique of induction consists wholly in learning how to take fair samples of the facts in question and how to observe these facts accurately and adequately. This kind of induction seems to be especially prominent in the organic sciences. However, a great deal of scientific work now consists of the forming and testing of hypotheses. In such cases, the inductive process is more complex. The technique of induction now involves at least four distinct processes: (1) the choice of a good hypothesis; (2) the computation of certain consequences, all of which must be true if the hypothesis is true; (3) the choice of a fair sample of these consequences for a test; and (4) the actual test of each of these chosen consequences.

Introduction to Poincaré‎’s Science and Hypothesis

This chapter studies Henri Poincaré's discussion of science and hypotheses. The useful hypotheses of science are of two kinds: the hypotheses which are valuable precisely because they are either verifiable or else refutable through a definite appeal to the tests furnished by experience; and the hypotheses which, despite the fact that experience suggests them, are valuable despite, or even because, of the fact that experience can neither confirm nor refute them. The first type of hypotheses are the ones which the textbooks of inductive logic and those summaries of scientific method which are customary in the course of the elementary treatises upon physical science are already accustomed to recognize and to characterize. However, Poincaré's treatment of the work of science is especially marked by the fact that he explicitly makes prominent both the existence and the scientific importance of hypotheses of the second type.

The Mechanical, the Historical, and the Statistical

This chapter begins by describing vitalism and materialism. The name “vitalism” is often given to those doctrines which have used the hypothesis that the phenomena of living organisms are due to some process which is essentially identical in its nature with the process exemplified by people's conscious voluntary activities. On the other hand, some things and events in the natural world—such as the recurrent movements of the heavenly bodies and the processes which attend the workings of machines—seem to be in many respects essentially different from the processes which result from people's plans, choices, and voluntary deeds. What is called a “mechanical theory of nature” or “materialism” undertakes to account for the vital processes, for the activities of organisms. The chapter then considers the three classifications of scientific methods: the historical, the mechanical, and the statistical.

The Problem of Truth in the Light of Recent Discussion

This chapter examines the nature of truth. It provides a classification of the main motives which are represented by the principal recent theories regarding the nature of truth. First, there is the motive especially suggested by the study of the history of institutions, by people's whole interest in what are called “evolutionary processes,” and by a large part of people's recent psychological investigation. This is the motive which leads many to describe human life altogether as a more or less progressive adjustment to a natural environment. The second motive is the same as that which, in ethics, is responsible for so many sorts of recent Individualism. It is the longing to be self-possessed and inwardly free, the determination to submit to no merely external authority. Meanwhile, the third motive has led to the discovery of what are novel truths regarding the fundamental relations upon which all of human thought and human activity rest.

Recent Logical Inquiries and Their Psychological Bearings

This introductory chapter discusses recent logical inquiries and their psychological bearings. These logical inquiries refer to two decidedly distinct classes of researches, both of which are receiving much attention today. The first of these two classes include researches directly bearing upon the psychology of the thinking process, and upon the natural history of logical phenomena in general. Such inquiries may be called “logical,” since they are sometimes undertaken by logicians for the sake of their own science, and in any case are suggested by the problems of logic. However, studies of this class are also contributions to psychology. Meanwhile, the second class of recent logical inquiries consists of studies in the comparative logic of the various sciences and of examinations of the first principles of certain special sciences.

The Philosophy of Loyalty

This chapter discusses the philosophy of loyalty. Loyalty refers to the willing, practical, and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause. A man is loyal when, first, he has some cause to which he is loyal; when, secondly, he willingly and thoroughly devotes himself to this cause; and when, thirdly, he expresses his devotion in some sustained and practical way, by acting steadily in the service of his cause. Since “loyalty” is a relative term, and always implies that there is some object, some cause, to which any given loyalty is to be shown, one must consider what the fitting objects of loyalty are. As such, in loyalty, when loyalty is properly defined, is the fulfillment of the whole moral law.

On Certain Limitations of the Thoughtful Public in America

This chapter looks at the thoughtful public in America. The term “contemporary American idealist” refers to a man or woman who is consciously and predominantly guided, in the purposes and in the great choices of life, by large ideals, such as admit of no merely material embodiment, and such as contemplate no merely private and personal satisfaction as their goal. Idealism has expressed itself in the rich differentiation of national religious life. Moreover, idealism has founded America's colleges and universities. Indeed, ever since the close of the Civil War, numerous forces have been at work to render America as a nation more thoughtful, more aspiring, and more in love with the immaterial things of the spirit, and that too even at the very moment when Americans' material prosperity has given them much opportunity to be what the mistaken foreign critics often suppose them to be—a people really sunk in practical materialism.

Race Questions and Prejudices

This chapter explores race questions and prejudices. The numerous questions and prejudices which are aroused by the contact of the various races of men have always been important factors in human history. However, they promise to become, in the near future, still more important than they have ever been before. Such increased importance of race questions and prejudices, if it comes to pass, will be due not to any change in human nature, and especially not to any increase in the diversity or in the contrasting traits of the races of men themselves, but simply to the greater extent and complexity of the work of civilization. The chapter then considers a few principles which seem to be serviceable to anyone who wants to look at race questions fairly and humanely.

Mind

This chapter explores the metaphysical theories of mind: predominantly perceptual theories; predominantly conceptual theories; and theories making use of the cognitive process of the interpretation. The nature of mind may be defined by a given metaphysical theory mainly in terms which regard mind as best or most known through possible “perceptions” or through possible “acquaintance” with its nature. Such theories have been prominent throughout the whole history of human thought. However, as is the case with every highly developed doctrine, the conceptual form is very naturally assumed by any philosophical theory of mind which seeks for theoretical completeness. The conceptual theories of mind have been in history of two general types: (1) the purely conceptual; and (2) the more inductive conceptual theories based upon the more or less highly developed “empirical psychologies” of the period in which these theories have flourished.