Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/318

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THE WORLD OF POSTULATES.
293

a connection; we hope that we shall soon find more connection; but still the vast plan, if indeed there be a plan, we search for in vain. But now, strangely enough, all this doubt affects in no wise the willing trustfulness of our devotion to the interests, not only of common life, but also of science. The doubt confuses us only when we talk of leligion. That the world as a whole is dark, nobody admits more cheerfully than does the modern scientific man, even when he looks to his science for all his religious consolation. For he seeks no consolation save what the phenomena as such furnish. But his philosophical doubt about the ultimate foundation of science is no check to his scientific ambition. He believes in science just as ardently as if he did not in the very first breath of each new philosophical dispute declare that the real world is unknowable. His faith in the methods of his specialty is as firm as his indifference to all extra-scientific speculation. His work is in fact done with a kind of instinctive confidence in himself and his fellows. The instinct is no doubt highly trained, but it remains an instinct, and a delightful one it is to him. The untrained instincts of the unscientific man must indeed be criticised and altered in many respects ere they can serve the purposes of science; but, after all the criticisms and alterations, the instinct remains with almost all men an instinct, — useful, pleasing, yes, indispensable; but its philosophical justification few people care to know, while its self-confidence every scientific essay, or lecture, or instructor will attest. Why now is it that, trusting as we all do this scien-