With the exception of archaeological inquiries and the study of law, as commonly pursued, these moral or social sciences are occupied with inquiry into the nature of the conventions under which men live, the institutions of society -- customs, usages, traditions, conventions, canons of conduct, standards of life, of taste, of morality and religion, law and order. No faithful inquiry into these matters can avoid an air of scepticism as to the stability or finality of some one or other among the received articles of institutional furniture. An inquiry into the nature and causes, the working and the outcome, of this institutional apparatus, will disturb the habitual convictions and preconceptions on which they rest, even if the outcome of the inquiry should bear no colour of iconoclasm; unless, indeed, the inquirer were so fortunate as to start with an inalienable presumption that the received convictions on these matters need no inquiry and are eternally right and good; in which case he does best to rest content at his point of departure. Scepticism is the beginning of science. Herein lies the difference between homiletical exposition and scientific inquiry.
Now, on these matters of habit and convention, morality and religion, law and order -- matters which intimately touch the community's accepted scheme of life -- all men have convictions;sentimental convictions to which they adhere with an instinctive tenacity, and any disturbance of which they resent as a violation of fundamental truth. These institutions of society are made up of the habits of thought of the people who live under them. The consensus of the unlearned, or unscientific, as regards the scientific validity of inquiries which touch these matters means little else than the collective expressions of a jealous orthodoxy with respect to the articles of the current social creed. One who purports to be a scientist in this field can gain popular approval of his scientific capacity, particularly the businessmen's approval, only by accepting and confirming current convictions regarding those elements of the accepted scheme of life with which his science is occupied. Any inquiry which does not lead to corroboration of the opinions in vogue among the unlearned is condemned as being spurious and dangerously wrong-headed; whereas an unbiassed inquiry into these things, of course, neither confirms nor disputes the scheme of things into which it inquires. And so, at the best, it falls into the same class with the fabled Alexandrine books that either agreed with the Koran or disagreed with it, and were therefore either idle or sacrilegious.
Within this field, vulgar sentiment will tolerate a sceptical or non-committal attitude toward vulgar convictions only as regards the decorative furnishings, not as regards the substance of the views arrived at. Some slight play of hazardous phrases about the fringe of the institutional fabric may be tolerated by the popular taste, as an element of spice, and as indicating a generous and unbiassed mind; but in such cases the conclusive test of scientific competency and leadership, in the popular apprehension, is a serene and magniloquent return to the orthodox commonplaces, after all such playful excursions. In fact, substantially nothing but homiletics and woolgathering will pass popular muster as science in this connection.
So it comes about that the men who are by common notoriety held to be the leaders in this field of learning, and who therefore are likely to be thrown up by official preferment, are such as enlarge on the commonplace and aphoristic wisdom of the laity. Not that the official sanction falls unfailingly on the paragons of mediocrity; there are many and illustrious exceptions, a fair proportion of whom would be illustrious even without the official sanction; and in this connection it is in place to recall that business principles have not hitherto held undivided and sovereign dominion in this province, and that there is even reason to believe that they are not yet coming fully into their own.
These putative leaders of science referred to are, in the common run of cases, not men with whom the science will have to count; but by virtue of their eligibility as academic spokesmen of the science, they are men with whom their contemporaries in the science will have to count. As is shown by the experience of the past, they are likely to be well forgotten by the generation that follows them, but they are, perforce, equally well remembered by their contemporaries. It is not the long-term serviceability of these official scientists that counts toward their availability for academic leadership, but their popular prestige. They may not be such leaders as the science needs, but they are such exponents of opinion as are believed to commend themselves to the tastes of the well-to-do laity. A citation of instances would seem invidious, nor, presumably, is it called for. The anecdotal history of contemporary events is particularly full at this juncture; while to outsiders who are not in a position to appreciate either the urgency or the subtlety of the motives of academic expediency in this bearing, a recital of illustrative instances might seem either libellous or farcical.
The exigencies of competitive academic enterprise, especially in its relation to the maintenance and increase of endowment, place the executive in a very delicate position in this matter and leave little room for squeamish deliberation.
