A like procedure might be followed with vacillation, triviality, and
the rest; and the outcome, in the author’s belief, would be the same.
It is less easy to attack the =intellectual attitudes=, those expressed
by _that_-clauses. Suppose, however, that you have to write two
letters: the one to an intimate friend, dealing with your home-life and
things that have happened in your immediate circle, and the other to a
business correspondent, regarding some contract that must be drawn up
in precise terms. Do you not sit down to write with _a felt difference
of bodily attitude_, almost as if in the two cases you were a different
organism? There are different visceral pressures, differences of
tonicity in the muscles of back and legs, differences in the sensed
play of facial expression, differences in the movements of arm and hand
in the intervals of setting pen to paper, rather obvious differences
in respiration, and marked differences of local or general involuntary
movement,—all of them deriving from the different suggestions or
determinations which prompt the letters. Here, then, are two _thats_:
‘I was sure _that_ he would be interested in any gossip,’ and ‘I knew
very well _that_ I had to write carefully’; and the processes that
carry these meanings seem, again, to reduce to a certain pattern of
kinæsthetic and organic sensations, tinged very likely by feeling.
_When observation reveals such a wealth of sensory processes, it
seems unnecessary to assume a new mental element for the intellectual
attitudes._
We saw on p. 4 that the concern of science is with facts. But just
because facts are the staple of science, it is well that we should be
a little jealous about them, that we should scrutinise every alleged
fact as severely as our methods allow, and criticise it in the light
of every possible theory. That is the present condition of the mental
attitude; experiments are being made, and arguments brought forward,
for and against its novelty and uniqueness; and the struggle must be
carried through to the bitter end; for only in that way can the truth
come stably to light. Meantime, those who are in the fight must of
necessity take a side; the onlooker, as we have said, is well advised
to await the issue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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