6
PARTISAN REVIEW
Those who hold this view sometimes seek to avoid its con–
sequences by admitting that not every experience or feeling is as
valid as every other, any more than every scientific judgment is
as valid as every other. But this does not alter the logic of their
position. The relative validity of different scientific judgments is
established by methods of public verification open to all who
submit themselves to its discipline, whereas the relative validity
of feelings is decided by another private feeling.
Not infrequently the demand that the revelations of feeling,
intuition or emotion about the world meet scientific canons of
evidence is rejected as an arbitrary legislative decree concerning
what visions are permissible and what may or may not exist. The
complaint is made that such a demand impoverishes imaginative
resources and blights the power to see new and fresh visions
without which preoccupation with method is nothing but a word–
game of sterile minds. As far as the seeing of visions and the
winning of new truths are concerned, such an interpretation is
nothing short of grotesque. The essential point, when the question
of knowledge or truth arises, is whether we have seen a vision or
been a victim of a delusion; or, to avoid the appearance of ques–
tion-begging, whether we have beheld a trustworthy or untrust–
worthy vision. Some people claim to see what we know is not
there.
If
seeing were believing, or if all seeing were evidence of
what could ' be believed, independently of the conditions under
which the seeing took place, it would be easy to keep men per–
petually
duped.
The intelligent demand for evidence need not paralyze the
pioneers of truth who catch glimpses of what until then may be
undreamed of. Nor does the progress of science demand complete
and exact confirmation of an hypothesis at the very outset, but
only enough to institute further inquiries. The history of the
sciences is sufficient evidence that the discipline of its method,
far from being a bar to the discovery of new knowledge, is a
positive aid in its acquisition. What other discipline can point
to the acquisition of new knowledge or to truths about existence
that command the universal assent of all investigators?
Nor is it true that scientific method or the philosophy of
naturalism, which whole-heartedly accepts scientific method as
the only reliable way of reaching truths about man, society, and
