that everything can be expressed by some mathematical law. Evidently there are no laws of this kind in sociology; but man is always susceptible to analogies connected with the forms of expression: it was thought that a high degree of perfection had been attained, and that already something had been accomplished for science when—starting from a few principles not offensive to common sense, which seem confirmed by a few common experiences—it had been found possible to present a doctrine in a simple, clear, and deductive manner. This so-called science is simply chatter.[1]
The Utopists excelled in the art of exposition in accordance with these prejudices; the more their exposition satisfied the requirements of a school book, the more convincing they thought their inventions were. I believe that the contrary of this belief is the truth, and that we should distrust proposals for social reform all the more, when every difficulty seems solved in an apparently satisfactory manner.
I should like to examine here, very briefly, a few of the illusions which have arisen out of what may be called the little science,[2] which believes that when it has attained
- ↑ "It has not been enough noticed how feeble is the reach of deduction in the psychological and moral sciences. … Very soon appeal has to be made to common sense, that is to say, to the continuous experience of the real, in order to inflect the consequences deduced and bend them along the sinuosities of life. Deduction succeeds in things moral only metaphorically so to speak" (Bergson, Creative Evolution, p. 224). Newman had already written something similar to this, but in more precise terms: "Thus it is that the logician for his own purposes, and most usefully as far as these purposes are concerned, turns rivers, full, winding and beautiful, into navigable canals. … His business is not to ascertain facts in the concrete but to find and dress up middle terms; and, provided they and the extremes which they go between are not equivocal, either in themselves or in their use. Supposing he can enable his pupils to show well in a viva voce disputation, … he has achieved the main purpose of his profession" (Grammar of Assent, pp. 261–262). There is no weakness in this denunciation of small talk.
- ↑ See note, p. 66.
