[59] That the only road to trustworthy affirmation lies through a string of negations, unfolded and appreciated by systematic procedure, is strongly insisted on by Bacon, Novum Organum, ii. 15, “Omnino Deo (formarum inditori et opifici), aut fortasse angelis et intelligentiis competit formas per affirmationem immediate nosse, atque ab initio contemplationis. Sed certe supra hominem est: cui tantum conceditur, procedere primo per negativas, et postremo loco desinere in affirmativas, post omnimodam exclusionem.” Compare another Aphorism, i. 46.
The following passage, transcribed from the Lectures of a distinguished physical philosopher of the present day, is conceived in the spirit of the Platonic Dialogues of Search, though Plato would have been astonished at such patient multiplication of experiments:—
“I should hardly sustain your interest in stating the difficulties which at first beset the investigation conducted with this apparatus, or the numberless precautions which the exact balancing of the two powerful sources of heat, here resorted to, rendered necessary. I believe the experiments, made with atmospheric air alone, might be numbered by tens of thousands. Sometimes for a week, or even for a fortnight, coincident and satisfactory results would be obtained: the strict conditions of accurate experimenting would appear to be found, when an additional day’s experience would destroy this hope and necessitate a recommencement, under changed conditions, of the whole inquiry. It is this which daunts the experimenter. It is this preliminary fight with the entanglements of a subject so dark, so doubtful, so uncheering, without any knowledge whether the conflict is to lead to anything worth possessing, that renders discovery difficult and rare. But the experimenter, and particularly the young experimenter, ought to know that as regards his own moral manhood, he cannot but win, if he only contend aright. Even, with a negative result, his consciousness that he has gone fairly to the bottom of his subject, as far as his means allowed — the feeling that he has not shunned labour, though that labour may have resulted in laying bare the nakedness of his case — re-acts upon his own mind, and gives it firmness for future work.” (Tyndall, Lectures on Heat, considered as a Mode of Motion, Lect x. p. 332.)
Sokrates considered the negative procedure to be valuable by itself, and separately. His theory of the natural state of the human mind; not ignorance, but false persuasion of knowledge.
It will thus appear that among the conditions requisite for philosophy, both Sokrates and Plato regarded the negative procedure as co-ordinate in value with the affirmative, and indispensable as a preliminary stage. But Sokrates went a step farther. He assigned to the negative an intrinsic importance by itself, apart from all implication with the affirmative; and he rested that opinion upon a psychological ground, formally avowed, and far larger than anything laid down by the Sophists. He thought that the natural state of the human mind, among established communities, was not simply ignorance, but ignorance mistaking itself for knowledge — false or uncertified belief — false persuasion of knowledge. The only way of dissipating such false persuasion was, the effective stimulus of the negative test, or cross-examining Elenchus; whereby a state of non-belief, or painful consciousness of ignorance, was substituted in its place. Such second state was indeed not the best attainable. It ought to be preliminary to a third, acquired by the struggles of the mind to escape from such painful consciousness; and to rise, under the continued stimulus of the tutelary Elenchus, to improved affirmative and defensible beliefs. But even if this third state were never reached, Sokrates declared the second state to be a material amendment on the first, which he deprecated as alike pernicious and disgraceful.
Declaration of Sokrates in the Apology; his constant mission to make war against the false persuasion of knowledge.
The psychological conviction here described stands proclaimed by Sokrates himself, with remarkable earnestness and emphasis, in his Apology before the Dikasts, only a month before his death. So deeply did he take to heart the prevalent false persuasion of knowledge, alike universal among all classes, mischievous, and difficult to correct — that he declared himself to have made war against it throughout his life, under a mission imposed upon him by the Delphian God; and to have incurred thereby wide-spread hatred among his fellow-citizens. To convict men, by cross-examination, of ignorance in respect to those matters which each man believed himself to know well and familiarly — this was the constant employment and the mission of Sokrates: not to teach — for he disclaimed the capacity of teaching — but to make men feel their own ignorance instead of believing themselves to know. Such cross-examination, conducted usually before an audience, however it might be salutary and indispensable, was intended to humiliate the respondent, and could hardly fail to offend and exasperate him. No one felt satisfaction except some youthful auditors, who admired the acuteness with which it was conducted. “I (declared Sokrates) am distinguished from others, and superior to others, by this character only — that I am conscious of my own ignorance: the wisest of men would be he who had the like consciousness; but as yet I have looked for such a man in vain.”[60]
[60] Plat. Apol. S. pp. 23-29. It is not easy to select particular passages for reference; for the sentiments which I have indicated pervade nearly the whole discourse.
Opposition of feeling between Sokrates and the Dikasts.
In delivering this emphatic declaration, Sokrates himself intimates his apprehension that the Dikasts will treat his discourse as mockery; that they will not believe him to be in earnest: that they will scarcely have patience to hear him claim a divine mission for so strange a purpose.[61] The declaration is indeed singular, and probably many of the Dikasts did so regard it; while those who thought it serious, heard it with repugnance. The separate value of the negative procedure or Elenchus was never before so unequivocally asserted, or so highly estimated. To disabuse men of those false beliefs which they mistook for knowledge, and to force on them the painful consciousness that they knew nothing — was extolled as the greatest service which could be rendered to them, and as rescuing them from a degraded and slavish state of mind.[62]