The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
469.
The most valuable knowledge is always discovered last: but the most valuable knowledge consists of _methods._ All methods, all the hypotheses on which the science of our day depends, were treated with the profoundest contempt for centuries: on their account a man used to be banished from the society of _respectable_ people--he was held to be an "_enemy of God,_" a reviler of the highest ideal, a madman. We had the whole _pathos_ of mankind against us,--our notion of what "truth" ought to be, of what the service of truth ought to be, our objectivity, our method, our calm, cautious and distrustful manner were altogether _despicable...._ At bottom, that which has kept men back most, is an æsthetic taste: they believed in the picturesque effect of truth; what they demanded of the scientist was, that he should make a strong appeal to their imagination. From the above, it would almost seem as if the very _reverse_ had been achieved, as if a sudden _jump_ had been made: as a matter of fact, the schooling which the moral hyperboles afforded, gradually prepared the way for that _milder form of pathos_ which at last became incarnate in the scientific man.... _Conscientiousness in small things,_ the self-control of the religious man, was a preparatory school for the scientific character, as was also, in a very pre-eminent sense, the attitude of mind which makes a man _take problems seriously,_ irrespective of what personal advantage he may derive from them....
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.