Introduction

Therefore theory, which gives facts their value and significance, is often very useful, even if it is
partially false, because it throws light on phenomena which no one has observed, it forces an
examination, from many angles, of facts which no one has hitherto studied, and provides the impulse
for more extensive and more productive researches.…
Hence it is a moral duty for the man of science to expose himself to the
risk of committing error, and to submit to criticism in order that science
may continue to progress. A writer … has launched a vigorous attack on the
author, saying that this is a scientific ideal which is very limited and very
paltry.… But those who are endowed with a mind serious and impersonal
enough not to believe that everything they write is the expression of
absolute and eternal truth will approve of this theory, which puts the aims of
science well above the miserable vanity and paltry amour propre of the
scientist.
—Ferrero, Les Lois psychologiques du symbolisme, p. viii