"The words which the great German poet put into the mouth of Mephistopheles when describing himself to Faust, afford perhaps the most concise and forcible statement of what we may call the anti-scientific spirit:—
'Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint,
Dem alles, was entsteht, zuwider ist.'
The true spirit of science is certainly affirmative, not negative; for, as I mentioned just now, its history teaches us that the development of our knowledge usually takes place through two or more simultaneous ideas of the same phenomenon, quite different from one another, both of which ultimately prove to be parts of some more general truth; so that a confident belief in one of those ideas does not involve or justify a denial of the others."—Address of the President of the British Association, 1873-4. p. 13.
"Philosophy is but wise and disciplined thought upon the subjects on which all men think. The minds of men, left to their own natural working, will never cease to think on these things; and if Philosophy should cease to attempt to think wisely on them, she abandons her position as a guide. She has been to blame for the carelessness of her procedure, for the overweeningness of her pretensions. But the remedy is soberness, not scepticism. Is it, after all, an evil, that in some directions we fail to attain certainty by mere thinking?... As in nature, the picture you see is not broad light and dark, but a thousand tender tones and hues melting into each other, and vibrating together between the light and dark: so is the mind of man." Archbishop of York—on The limits of Philosophical Inquiry, pp. 25-26.
"To the knowledge of the most contemptible effect in nature, 'tis necessary to know the whole Syntax of Causes, and their particular circumstances, and modes of action. Nay, we know nothing, till we know ourselves, which are the summary of all the world without us, and the Index of the Creation." Glanvill, Vanity of Dogmatizing, Chap. xxii. Ed. 1. p. 217.
"A branching channel, with a mazy flood?
The purple stream that through my vessels glides,
Dull and unconscious flows, like common tides:
The pipes through which the circling juices stray,