The Consciousness Of A General Idea Has

No General Description Of The Mode Of Advance Of Human Knowledge Can Be Just Which Leaves Out Of Account The Social Aspect Of Knowledge. That Is Of Its Very Essence. What A Thing Society Is! The Workingman, With His Trade Union, Knows That. Men And Women Moving In Polite Society Understand It, Still Better. But Bohemians, Like Me, Whose Work Is Done In Solitude, Are Apt To Forget That Not Only Is A Man As A Whole Little Better Than A Brute In Solitude, But Also That Everything That Bears Any Important Meaning To Him Must Receive Its Interpretation From Social Considerations.

Theology, I Am Persuaded, Derives Its Initial Impulse From A Religious Wavering; For There Is Quite As Much, Or More, That Is Mysterious And Calculated To Awaken Scientific Curiosity In The Intercourse With God, And It [is] A Problem Quite Analogous To That Of Theology.

Theoretically, I Grant You, There Is No Possibility Of Error In Necessary Reasoning. But To Speak Thus "theoretically," Is To Uselanguage In A Pickwickian Sense. In Practice, And In Fact, Mathematics Is Not Exempt From That Liability To Error That Affects Everything That Man Does.

It Is A Common Observation That A Science First Begins To Be Exact When It Is Quantitatively Treated. What Are Called The Exact Sciences Are No Others Than The Mathematical Ones.

Do You Call It Doubting To Write Down On A Piece Of Paper That You Doubt? If So, Doubt Has Nothing To Do With Any Serious Business. But Do Not Make Believe; If Pedantry Has Not Eaten All The Reality Out Of You, Recognize, As You Must, That There Is Much That You Do Not Doubt, In The Least. Now That Which You Do Not At All Doubt, You Must And Do Regard As Infallible, Absolute Truth.