Maxims and Reflections
every one speaking of toleration, and trying to prevent others from
thinking and expressing themselves after their own fashion?
523
To communicate knowledge by means of analogy appears to me a process
equally useful and pleasant. The analogous case is not there to force
itself on the attention or prove anything; it offers a comparison with
some other case, but is not in union with it. Several analogous cases do
not join to form a seried row: they are like good society, which always
suggests more than it grants.
524
To err is to be as though truth did not exist. To lay bare the error to
oneself and others is retrospective discovery.
525
With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be
organised afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new
maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.
526
When we find facts within our knowledge exhibited by some new method, or
even, it may be, described in a foreign language, they receive a
peculiar charm of novelty and wear a fresh air.
527
If two masters of the same art differ in their statement of it, in all
likelihood the insoluble problem lies midway between them.
528
The orbits of certainties touch one another; but in the interstices
there is room enough for error to go forth and prevail.
529
We more readily confess to errors, mistakes, and shortcomings in our
conduct than in our thought.
530
And the reason of it is that the conscience is humble and even takes a
pleasure in being ashamed. But the intellect is proud, and if forced to
recant is driven to despair.
531
This also explains how it is that truths which have been recognised are
at first tacitly admitted, and then gradually spread, so that the very
thing which was obstinately denied appears at last as something quite
natural.
532
Ignorant people raise questions which were answered by the wise
thousands of years ago.
533
When a man sees a phenomenon before him, his thoughts often range beyond
it; when he hears it only talked about, he has no thoughts at all.
534
Authority. Man cannot exist without it, and yet it brings in its train
just as much of error as of truth. It perpetuates one by one things
which should pass away one by one; it rejects that which should be
preserved and allows it to pass away; and it is chiefly to blame for
mankind's want of progress.
535
Authority--the fact, namely, that something has already happened or been
said or decided, is of great value; but it is only a pedant who demands
authority for everything.
536
An old foundation is worthy of all respect, but it must not take from us
the right to build afresh wherever we will.
537
Our advice is that every man should remain in the path he has struck out
for himself, and refuse to be overawed by authority, hampered by
prevalent opinion, or carried away by fashion.
538
The various branches of knowledge always tend as a whole to stray away
from life, and return thither only by a roundabout way.
539
For they are, in truth, text-books of life: they gather outer and inner
experiences into a general and connected whole.
540
An important fact, an ingenious _aperçu_, occupies a very great number
of men, at first only to make acquaintance with it; then to understand
it; and afterwards to work it out and carry it further.
541
On the appearance of anything new the mass of people ask: What is the
use of it? And they are not wrong. For it is only through the use of
anything that they can perceive its value.
542
The truly wise ask what the thing is in itself and in relation to other
things, and do not trouble themselves about the use of it,--in other
words, about the way in which it may be applied to the necessities of
existence and what is already known. This will soon be discovered by
minds of a very different order--minds that feel the joy of living, and
are keen, adroit, and practical.
543
Every investigator must before all things look upon himself as one who
is summoned to serve on a jury. He has only to consider how far the
statement of the case is complete and clearly set forth by the evidence.
Then he draws his conclusion and gives his vote, whether it be that his
opinion coincides with that of the foreman or not.
544
And in acting thus he remains equally at ease whether the majority agree
with him or he finds himself in a minority. For he has done what he
could: he has expressed his convictions; and he is not master of the
minds or hearts of others.
545
In the world of science, however, these sentiments have never been of
much account. There everything depends on making opinion prevail and
dominate; few men are really independent; the majority draws the
individual after it.
546
The history of philosophy, of science, of religion, all shows that
opinions spread in masses, but that that always comes to the front which
is more easily grasped, that is to say, is most suited and agreeable to
the human mind in its ordinary condition. Nay, he who has practised
self-culture in the higher sense may always reckon upon meeting an
adverse majority.
547
There is much that is true which does not admit of being calculated;
just as there are a great many things that cannot be brought to the test
of a decisive experiment.
548
It is just for this that man stands so high, that what could not
otherwise be brought to light should be brought to light in him.
What is a musical string, and all its mechanical division, in comparison
with the musician's ear? May we not also say, what are the elementary
phenomena of nature itself compared with man, who must control and
modify them all before he can in any way assimilate them to himself?
549
To a new truth there is nothing more hurtful than an old error.
550
The ultimate origin of things is completely beyond our faculties; hence
when we see anything come into being, we look upon it as having been
already there. This is why we find the theory of _emboîtement_
intelligible.
551
There are many problems in natural science on which we cannot fittingly
speak unless we call metaphysics to our aid; but not the wisdom of the
schools, which consists in mere verbiage. It is that which was before
physics, exists with it, and will be after it.
552
Since men are really interested in nothing but their own opinions, every
one who puts forward an opinion looks about him right and left for means
of strengthening himself and others in it. A man avails himself of the
truth so long as it is serviceable; but he seizes on what is false with
a passionate eloquence as soon as he can make a momentary use of it;
whether it be to dazzle others with it as a kind of half-truth, or to
employ it as a stopgap for effecting an apparent union between things
that have been disjointed. This experience at first caused me annoyance,
and then sorrow; and now it is a source of mischievous satisfaction. I
have pledged myself never again to expose a proceeding of this kind.
553
Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of
the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for
truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly
flashes out into fruitful knowledge. It is a revelation working from
within on the outer world, and lets a man feel that he is made in the
image of God. It is a synthesis of World and Mind, giving the most
blessed assurance of the eternal harmony of things.
554
A man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is
comprehensible; otherwise he would not try to fathom it.
555
There are pedants who are also rascals, and they are the worst of all.
556
A man does not need to have seen or experienced everything himself. But
if he is to commit himself to another's experiences and his way of
putting them, let him consider that he has to do with three things--the
object in question and two subjects.
557
The supreme achievement would be to see that stating a fact is starting
a theory.
558
If I acquiesce at last in some ultimate fact of nature, it is, no doubt,
only resignation; but it makes a great difference whether the
resignation takes place at the limits of human faculty, or within the
hypothetical boundaries of my own narrow individuality.
559
If we look at the problems raised by Aristotle, we are astonished at his
gift of observation. What wonderful eyes the Greeks had for many things!
Only they committed the mistake of being over-hasty, of passing
straightway from the phenomenon to the explanation of it, and thereby
produced certain theories that are quite inadequate. But this is the
mistake of all times, and still made in our own day.
560
Hypotheses are cradle-songs by which the teacher lulls his scholars to
sleep. The thoughtful and honest observer is always learning more and
more of his limitations; he sees that the further knowledge spreads, the
more numerous are the problems that make their appearance.
561
Our mistake is that we doubt what is certain and want to establish what
is uncertain. My maxim in the study of Nature is this: hold fast what is
certain and keep a watch on what is uncertain.
562
What a master a man would be in his own subject if he taught nothing
useless!
563
The greatest piece of folly is that every man thinks himself compelled
to hand down what people think they have known.
564
If many a man did not feel obliged to repeat what is untrue, because he
has said it once, the world would have been quite different.
565
Every man looks at the world lying ready before him, ordered and
fashioned into a complete whole, as after all but an element out of
which his endeavour is to create a special world suited to himself.
Capable men lay hold of the world without hesitation and try to shape
their course as best they can; others dally over it, and some doubt even
of their own existence.
The man who felt the full force of this fundamental truth would dispute
with no one, but look upon another's mode of thought equally with his
own, as merely a phenomenon. For we find almost daily that one man can
think with ease what another cannot possibly think at all; and that,
too, not in matters which might have some sort of effect upon their
common weal or woe, but in things which cannot touch them at all.
566
There is nothing more odious than the majority; it consists of a few
powerful men to lead the way; of accommodating rascals and submissive
weaklings; and of a mass of men who trot after them, without in the
least knowing their own mind.
567
When I observe the luminous progress and expansion of natural science in
modern times, I seem to myself like a traveller going eastwards at dawn,
and gazing at the growing light with joy, but also with impatience;
looking forward with longing to the advent of the full and final light,
but, nevertheless, having to turn away his eyes when the sun appeared,
unable to bear the splendour he had awaited with so much desire.
568
We praise the eighteenth century for concerning itself chiefly with
analysis. The task remaining to the nineteenth is to discover the false
syntheses which prevail, and to analyse their contents anew.
569
A school may be regarded as a single individual who talks to himself for
a hundred years, and takes an extraordinary pleasure in his own being,
however foolish and silly it may be.
570
In science it is a service of the highest merit to seek out those
fragmentary truths attained by the ancients, and to develop them
further.
571
If a man devotes himself to the promotion of science, he is firstly
opposed, and then he is informed that his ground is already occupied. At