And,  after  all,  is  not  this  duty  of  neutrality  where
only  our  inner  interests  would  lead  us  to  believe,  the
most  ridiculous  of  commands?  Is  it  not  sheer  dog-
matic folly  to  say  that  our  inner  interests  can  have  no
real  connection  with  the  forces  that  the  hidden  world
may  contain?  In  other  cases  divinations  based  on
inner  interests  have  proved  prophetic  enough.  Take
science  itself!  Without  an  imperious  inner  demand
on  our  part  for  ideal  logical  and  mathematical  harmo-
nies, we  should  never  have  attained  to  proving  that
such  harmonies  lie  hidden  between  all  the  chinks  and
interstices  of  the  crude  natural  world.  Hardly  a
law  has  been  established  in  science,  hardly  a  fact  as-
certained, which  was  not  first  sought  after,  often  with
sweat  and  blood,  to  gratify  an  inner  need.  Whence
such  needs  come  from  we  do  not  know:  we  find
them  in  us,  and  biological  psychology  so  far  only
classes  them  with  Darwin's  '  accidental  variations.'


56  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy.
