An introduction to the study of experimental medicine / Translated by H.C. Greene.

  • Bernard, Claude, 1813-1878.
Date:
(1865), 1927/1949
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: An introduction to the study of experimental medicine / Translated by H.C. Greene. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    we still possess an inner criterion in our sensations. So, when we reason about our own actions, we again have a sure guide, because we are conscious of what we are thinking and of what we are feeling. But if we wish to judge the actions of another man and to know the motives which make him act, then it is quite different. Doubt- less we see before our eyes the man's movements and the acts which, we are sure, are expressions of his feeling and his will. What is more, we also admit that there is a necessary relation between actions and their cause; but what is this cause ? We do not feel it ourselves, we are not aware of it as in our own case; we are therefore forced to interpret and imagine it from the movements that we see and the words that we hear. So we must verify the man's acts, one by an- other; we consider how he behaves in such and such circumstances, and in short, we turn to the experimental method. In like manner, when a man of science considers the natural phenomena which surround him and which he wishes to know in themselves and in their complex mutual relations of causation, every inner criterion fails him, and he is forced to invoke experiment to verify the sup- positions and the reasonings that he is making about them. Experi- ment, then, according to Goethe's expression, becomes the one medi- ator between the objective and the subjective,^ that is to say, between the man of science and the phenomena which surround him. Experimental reasoning is the only reasoning that naturalists and physicians can use in seeking the truth and approaching it as nearly as possible. Indeed, in its very character as an outer and unconscious criterion, experiment gives only relative truth, without being able to prove to the mind that it knows truth absolutely. An experimenter facing natural phenomena is like a spectator watching a dumb show. He is in some sort the examining magistrate for nature; only instead of grappling with men who seek to deceive him by lying confessions or false witness, he is dealing with natural phenomena which for him are persons whose language and customs he does not know, persons living in the midst of circumstances un- known to him, yet persons whose designs he wishes to learn. For this purpose he uses all the means within his power. He observes their actions, their gait, their behavior, and he seeks to disengage their cause by means of various attempts, called experiments. He * Goethe, CEuvres d'histoire naturelle, translation by M. Ch. Martins, Intro- duction, p. 1.