The same remarks will apply to the questions connected with banking and currency; the standard of value; and, indeed, all subjects which have a financial bearing. On every such question we see wide differences of opinion without any common basis to rest upon.
It may be said, in reply, that in these cases there are really no grounds for forming an opinion, and that the contests which arise over them are merely those between conflicting interests. But this claim is not at all consonant with the form which we see the discussion assume. Nearly every one has a decided opinion on these several subjects; whereas, if there were no data for forming an opinion, it would be unreasonable to maintain any whatever. Indeed, it is evident that there must be truth somewhere, and the only question that can be open is that of the mode of discovering it. No man imbued with a scientific spirit can claim that such truth is beyond the power of the human intellect. He may doubt his own ability to grasp it, but cannot doubt that by pursuing the proper method and adopting the best means the problem can be solved. It is, in fact, difficult to show why some exact results could not be as certainly reached in economic questions as in those of physical science. It is true that if we pursue the inquiry far enough we shall find more complex conditions to encounter, because the future course of demand and supply enters as an uncertain element. But a remarkable fact to be considered is that the difference of opinion to which we allude does not depend upon different estimates of the future, but upon different views of the most elementary and general principles of the subject. It is as if men were not agreed whether air were elastic or whether the earth turns on its axis. Why is it that while in all subjects of physical science we find a general agreement through a wide range of subjects, and doubt commences only where certainty is not attained, yet when we turn to economic subjects we do not find the beginning of an agreement?
No two answers can be given. It is because the two classes of subjects are investigated by different instruments and in a different spirit. The physicist has an exact nomenclature; uses methods of research well adapted to the objects he has in view; pursues his investigations without being attacked by those who wish for different results; and, above all, pursues them only for the purpose of discovering the truth. In economic questions the case is entirely different. Only in rare cases are they studied without at least the suspicion that the student has a preconceived theory to support. If results are attained which oppose any powerful interest, this interest can hire a competing investigator to bring out a different result. So far as the public can see, one man's result is as good as another's, and thus the object is as far off as ever. We may be sure that until there is an intelligent and rational public, able to distinguish between the speculations of the charlatan and the researches of the investigator, the present state of things will continue. What we want is so wide a diffusion of scientific ideas that there shall be a class of men engaged in studying economic problems for their own sake, and an intelligent public able to judge what they are doing. There must be an improvement in the objects at which they aim in education, and it is now worth while to inquire what that improvement is.
It is not mere instruction in any branch of technical science that is wanted. No knowledge of chemistry, physics, or biology, however extensive, can give the learner much aid in forming a correct opinion of such a question as that of the currency. If we should claim that political economy ought to be more extensively studied, we would be met by the question, which of several conflicting systems shall we teach? What is wanted is not to teach this system or that, but to give such a training that the student shall be able to decide for himself which system is right.
It seems to me that the true educational want is ignored both by those who advocate a classical and those who advocate a scientific education. What is really wanted is to train the intellectual powers, and the question ought to be, what is the best method of doing this? Perhaps it might be found that both of the conflicting methods could be improved upon. The really distinctive features, which we should desire to see introduced, are two in number: the one the scientific spirit; the other the scientific discipline. Although many details may be classified under each of these heads, yet there is one of pre-eminent importance on which we should insist.
The one feature of the scientific spirit which outweighs all others in importance is the love of knowledge for its own sake. If by our system of education we can inculcate this sentiment we shall do what is, from a public point of view, worth more than any amount of technical knowledge, because we shall lay the foundation of all knowledge. So long as men study only what they think is going to be useful their knowledge will be partial and insufficient. I think it is to the constant inculcation of this fact by experience, rather than to any reasoning, that is due the continued appreciation of a liberal education. Every business-man knows that a business-college training is of very little account in enabling one to fight the battle of life, and that college-bred men have a great advantage even in fields where mere education is a secondary matter. We are accustomed to seeing ridicule thrown upon the questions sometimes asked of candidates for the civil service because the questions refer to subjects of which a knowledge is not essential. The reply to all criticisms of this kind is that there is no one quality which more certainly assures a man's usefulness to society than the propensity to acquire useless knowledge. Most of our citizens take a wide interest in public affairs, else our form of government would be a failure. But it is desirable that their study of public measures should be more critical and take a wider range. It is especially desirable that the conclusions to which they are led should be unaffected by partisan sympathies. The more strongly the love of mere truth is inculcated in their nature the better this end will be attained.
The scientific discipline to which I ask mainly to call your attention consists in training the scholar to the scientific use of language. Although whole volumes may be written on the logic of science there is one general feature of its method which is of fundamental significance. It is that every term which it uses and every proposition which it enunciates has a precise meaning which can be made evident by proper definitions. This general principle of scientific language is much more easily inculcated by example than subject to exact description; but I shall ask leave to add one to several attempts I have made to define it. If I should say that when a statement is made in the language of science the speaker knows what he means, and the hearer either knows it or can be made to know it by proper definitions, and that this community of understanding is frequently not reached in other departments of thought, I might be understood as casting a slur on whole departments of inquiry. Without intending any such slur, I may still say that language and statements are worthy of the name scientific as they approach this standard; and, moreover, that a great deal is said and written which does not fulfil the requirement. The fact that words lose their meaning when removed from the connections in which that meaning has been acquired and put to higher uses, is one which, I think, is rarely recognized. There is nothing in the history of philosophical inquiry more curious than the frequency of interminable disputes on subjects where no agreement can be reached because the opposing parties do not use words in the same sense. That the history of science is not free from this reproach is shown by the fact of the long dispute whether the force of a moving body was proportional to the simple velocity or to its square. Neither of the parties to the dispute thought it worth while to define what they meant by the word "force," and it was at length found that if a definition was agreed upon the seeming difference of opinion would vanish. Perhaps the most striking feature of the case, and one peculiar to a scientific dispute, was that the opposing parties did not differ in their solution of a single mechanical problem. I say this is curious, because the very fact of their agreeing upon every concrete question which could have been presented ought to have made it clear that some fallacy was lacking in the discussion as to the measure of force. The good effect of a scientific spirit is shown by the fact that this discussion is almost unique in the history of science during the past two centuries, and that scientific men themselves were able to see the fallacy involved, and thus to bring the matter to a conclusion.
If we now turn to the discussion of philosophers, we shall find at least one yet more striking example of the same kind. The question of the freedom of the human will has, I believe, raged for centuries. It cannot yet be said that any conclusion has been reached. Indeed, I have heard it admitted by men of high intellectual attainments that the question was insoluble. Now a curious feature of this dispute is that none of the combatants, at least on the affirmative side, have made any serious attempt to define what should be meant by the phrase freedom of the will, except by using such terms as require definition equally with the word freedom itself. It can, I conceive, be made quite clear that the assertion, "The will is free," is one without meaning, until we analyze more fully the different meanings to be attached to the word free. Now this word has a perfectly well-defined signification in every-day life. We say that anything is free when it is not subject to external constraint. We also know exactly what we mean when we say that a man is free to do a certain act. We mean that if he chooses to do it there is no external constraint acting to prevent him. In all cases a relation of two things is implied in the word, some active agent or power, and the presence or absence of another constraining agent. Now, when we inquire whether the will itself is free, irrespective of external constraints, the word free no longer has a meaning, because one of the elements implied in it is ignored.
To inquire whether the will itself is free is like inquiring whether fire itself is consumed by the burning, or whether clothing is itself clad. It is not, therefore, at all surprising that both parties have been able to dispute without end, but it is a most astonishing phenomenon of the human intellect that the dispute should go on generation after generation without the parties finding out whether there was really any difference of opinion between them on the subject. I venture to say that if there is any such difference, neither party has ever analyzed the meaning of the words used sufficiently far to show it. The daily experience of every man, from his cradle to his grave, shows that human acts are as much the subject of external causal influences as are the phenomena of nature. To dispute this would be little short of the ludicrous. All that the opponents of freedom, as a class, have ever claimed is the assertion of a causal connection between the acts of the will and influences independent of the will. True, propositions of this sort can be expressed in a variety of ways connoting an endless number of more or less objectionable ideas, but this is the substance of the matter.
To suppose that the advocates on the other side meant to take issue on this proposition would be to assume that they did not know what they were saying. The conclusion forced upon us is that though men spend their whole lives in the study of the most elevated department of human thought it does not guard them against the danger of using words without meaning. It would be a mark of ignorance, rather than of penetration, to hastily denounce propositions on subjects we are not well acquainted with because we do not understand their meaning. I do not mean to intimate that philosophy itself is subject to this reproach. When we see a philosophical proposition couched in terms we do not understand, the most modest and charitable view is to assume that this arises from our lack of knowledge. Nothing is easier than for the ignorant to ridicule the propositions of the learned. And yet, with every reserve, I cannot but feel that the disputes to which I have alluded prove the necessity of bringing scientific precision of language into the whole domain of thought. If the discussion had been confined to a few, and other philosophers had analyzed the subject, and showed the fictitious character of the discussion, or had pointed out where opinions really might differ, there would be nothing derogatory to philosophers. But the most suggestive circumstance is that although a large proportion of the philosophic writers in recent times have devoted more or less attention to the subject, few, or none, have made even this modest contribution. I speak with some little confidence on this subject, because several years ago I wrote to one of the most acute thinkers of the country, asking if he could find in philosophic literature any terms or definitions expressive of the three different senses in which not only the word freedom, but nearly all words implying freedom were used. His search was in vain.