Speculation

“ The world of speculation, like the physical globe, is rounded to a sphere, but a sphere of more gigantic compass and more difficult circumnavigation than any which the whole natural universe can show. The primitive articles of all thought, the seminal principles of all reason, the necessary constituents of all knowledge, the keys of all truth, lie, at first, buried under our very feet; but, as yet, we are not privileged to find them. We must first circumnavigate the globe; the whole world of speculation must be traversed by our weary feet. ”

“ Speculation is one of the most intolerable and revolting manifestations of disease in the economic organism. Those profound sages who maintain that everything that exists, is superexcellent, have also attempted to defend speculation, to justify it, to assert its necessity even to enthusiasm. ”

“ Where, then, is such a one to look for the limits and the standard of a legitimate venture—the guide and safeguard against temerity—when his boldness of speculation springs really from a profound love of truth, and a pure enthusiasm for science? ”

“ Perhaps, in the whole history of man, it is an unexampled case that such a scheme of speculation—which offers nothing seducing to human aspirations, nothing splendid to the human imagination, nothing even positive and affirmative to the human understanding—should have been able to found an interest so broad and deep among thirty-five millions of cultivated men. ”

“ Through vast combinations of trade, forlorn hopes of speculation, you trace them up to a clear head and a self-earned sixpence. It is the same with all large mental accumulations: they begin with a steady brain and the first solid result of thought, however small—the nucleus of speculation. The true aim of the scholar is not to crowd his memory, but to classify and sort it, till what was a heap of chaotic curiosities becomes a museum of science. ”

“ Such were the results of that system of speculation, which assumed for its basis the existence of a species of beings far above the pitch of humanity, and which, in its application to human affairs, reduces them to the level of brutes. ”

“ Action is more enlightening than speculation. I will work while it is called the day, but I will not try, like the philosophers, to look with naked eyes upon the sun of truth. Such researches only hinder me.”
Both this confession of too many listeners to philosophical discourses, and the resulting question to which I have just referred, are to nobody more familiar, I have said, than to the student of philosophy himself. Nobody, in fact, ought to know better than he does the limitations of mere speculation. Does he not often feel them bitterly himself? ”

“ Such disputes, however, are usually confined to mere speculations, undemonstrable theories, or undeveloped fields of inquiry. When once the speculation ripens into a demonstrable truth, all contention ceases. ”

“ To cement together the detached fragments of a subject, never yet treated as a whole; to harmonize the true portions of discordant theories, by supplying the links of thought necessary to connect them, and by disentangling them from the errors with which they are always more or less interwoven, must necessarily require a considerable amount of original speculation. ”

“ Of course, there is the possibility for ‘thinking’ to degenerate into profitless speculation; but we are certainly as much in need of the results of thinking about the facts already accumulated as we are of more facts. ”

“ Hence he was a speculator in the truest sense of the word; for speculation is not the art of devising ingenious hypotheses, or of drawing subtle conclusions, or of plausibly manœuvring abstractions. Strictly and properly speaking, it is the power of seeing true facts, and of unseeing false ones; a simple enough accomplishment to all appearance, but nevertheless one which, considered in its application to the study of human nature, is probably the rarest, and, at any rate, has been the least successfully cultivated, of all the endowments of intelligence. ”

“ The moment the field of the known is abandoned, and one launches out into pictures of future forms, a wide field is opened for speculation. Differences of opinion start over that which is probable or not probable. ”

“ We may fairly ask, though, whether, after all this is granted, it pays to spend our time in speculation upon circumstantial evidence, when all our conclusions may possibly be wrong, when they can not possibly be true unless they are put into a general form, and when the presumption in their favor is only a probability at best. Would it not be wise for us to spend all our time in the observation of nature, rather than to devote our energies to the discussion of general problems? ”

“ There are two ways of passing beyond the domain of practical certainty, and of looking into the vast range of possibility. One is by asking, "What is knowledge? What constitutes experience?" If we adopt this course we are plunged into a sea of speculation. ”

“ but, from the dawn of exact knowledge to the present day, observation, experiment, and speculation have gone hand in hand; and, whenever science has halted or strayed from the right path, it has been, either because its votaries have been content with mere unverified or unverifiable speculation (and this is the commonest case, because observation and experiment are hard work, while speculation is amusing) ; or it has been, because the accumulation of details of observation has for a time excluded speculation. ”

“ Driven from the enclosures where the demonstrable sciences hold empire, the enthusiasts of speculation turn off upon ground where there is more scope, more obscurity, more license, and less of the stern and instant magistracy of right reason. Some give themselves to politics, some to political economy, and some to theology ”

“ Yet to himself he had continued to discount as absurd and preposterous the possibility of his vague apprehension ever being realized. It was a chance guess, a silly speculation, based upon the most trivial data, he sagely concluded. ”

“ Metaphysical speculation, again, has been one of the potent influences on human conduct, and although its rise, and one may almost say also its decline and fall, belong to comparatively civilized ages, yet its connexion with lower stages of intellectual history may to some extent be discerned. ”

“ Considering the vast wilderness of speculation which exists on the subject under consideration, it is not at all surprising that many should turn away from every speculative view of it with disgust, and endeavour to dissuade others from such pursuits. ”

“ It has been asserted that metaphysical speculation is a thing of the past, and that physical science has extirpated it. The discussion of the categories of existence, however, does not appear to be in danger of coming to an end in our time, and the exercise of speculation continues as fascinating to every fresh mind as it was in the days of Thales. ”

“ But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dulness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important. Hence it is that speculation commonly ceases where sight ceases; insomuch that of things invisible there is little or no observation. ”

“ Nor can any system of speculation be constructed on a sound basis which has neglected to dig about the foundations of human knowledge, to ascertain what our thoughts can and what they cannot compass, and what are the varying degrees of assurance with which the various classes of propositions may be accepted by us. ”

“ Nor can it be fairly denied, as I before remarked, that some of the students of the theory have become so enamoured of it, so carried away by the intoxication of the gigantic speculation it opens out to the imagination, that they have succumbed to the temptation to carry speculation beyond what the proof warrants, and thus lend some aid to the deplorable confusion, which would blend in one, what is legitimate inference and what is unproved hypothesis or mere supposition. ”

“ At this point, then, argument (on the material plane) comes to an end, and speculation or assumption begins. Science answers its own questions, but neither can nor will answer any others. And upon what pretence do we ask any others? ”

“ Mere speculation, on the other hand, is useless, and indeed is only misleading. It is a matter on which it is tempting to write dogmatically, but where the honest inquirer is quickly pulled up by the hard facts that force themselves on his attention. ”

“ That a man whose mind and time have been engrossed with the affairs of a specialist and man of affairs could have found time to enter the field of speculation, and there display not only the most extensive knowledge of the exact natural sciences, and refute what is held to be scientific truth with bold theories and ingenious speculations on the nature and destiny of man is marvelous.... ”

“ And we have been thus particular in stating this principle, and in enumerating a few of its consequences, because it is by the discovery of a law directly opposed to it that the great thinkers of modern times have revolutionised the whole of philosophy, and escaped the calamitous conclusions into which former systems were precipitated. In the olden days of speculation, this distinction was rendered real and absolute by the logical understanding. The objective and the subjective of human knowledge (i.e., the reality and our perception of it) were permanently severed from one another ”

“ For want of this, they often not only overlook the contradiction which outward facts oppose to their theories, but lose sight of the legitimate purpose of speculation altogether, and let their speculative faculties go astray into regions not peopled with real beings, animate or inanimate, even idealized, but with personified shadows created by the illusions of metaphysics or by the mere entanglement of words, and think these shadows the proper objects of the highest, the most transcendant, philosophy. ”

“ His call to speculation has been widely responded to; but, if we turn to the most important product of this speculative movement, we have to extract what enlightenment we can from the dictum that, in the only sense in which the Absolute is good, it "manifests itself in various degrees of goodness and badness." ”

“ A real distinction exists between speculation which is carried on by persons of means and experience, and based on an intelligent forecast, and that which is carried on by persons without these qualifications. ”

“ The quality of the problem and of our powers are, we believe, so related that a mere expansion of the latter would enable them to cope with the former. Why, then, in scientific speculation should we turn our eyes exclusively to the past? ”

“ His first theory is his last, except that in later years his interest in abstract speculation had obviously declined, and his declarations, if equally dogmatic in form, show less confidence than desire to be confident. He is glad to turn from speculations to facts, and thinks that his strength lies in the direction rather of the natural sciences than of speculative thought. ”

“ Thus the speculations to which we were first driven in the hungry teeth of savage facts by the slender hope of profit, by the overpowering fear of the ruin which stared us in the face, have slowly ceased to be speculative and become the foundations of the ordinary everyday business of life. Our postulates have grown respectable, and are now entitled axioms. ”

“ But we may go a step further;—though, in our present field of speculation, we confine ourselves to knowledge founded on the facts which the external world presents to us, we cannot forget, in speaking of such a theme as that to which we have thus been led, that these are but a small, and the least significant 254 portion of the facts which bear upon it. ”

“ Ht is of the essence of such speculation that it transcends immediate fact. Its business is to make thought creative of the future. It effects this by its vision of systems of ideas, including observation but generalized beyond it. The need of discipline arises because the history of speculation is analogous to the history of practice. If we survey mankind, their speculations have been foolish, brutish, and nasty. The true use of history is that we extract from it general principles as to the discipline of practice and the discipline of speculation. ”

“ As a speculative writer, I should have had no one to consult but myself, and should have encountered in my speculations none of the obstacles which would have started up whenever they came to be applied to practice. ”

“ This, like many similar embarrassments, has been occasioned by the error of ascribing to the mental condition of an unformed society a faculty which preeminently belongs to an advanced stage of intellectual development, the faculty of distinguishing in speculation ideas which are blended in practice. ”

“ Form a plan; have an object; then work for it, learn all you can about it, and you will be sure to succeed. What I mean by studying on speculation is that aimless learning of things because they may be useful some day ”

“ It is on the higher levels of speculative generalisation that the impressive mutations in the development of thought have taken place, and that the shifting of points of view and the clashing of convictions have drawn men into controversy and analysis of their ideas and have given rise to schools of thought. The matter-of-fact generalisations have met with relatively few adventures and have afforded little scope for intellectual initiative and profoundly picturesque speculation. ”

“ Well, I will admit that when we come into real, practical life, we are compelled to modify, if not to give up as indefensible, some of our speculative opinions. In fact, the issue of every inquiry, when fearlessly pursued, is uncertainty—painful, distracting uncertainty—and man becomes the sport, if not the victim, of his own speculations and investigations. ”