A History of Science Volume V Part 9

This is certainly heaping hypotheses together in a reckless way, and it is perhaps not surprising that Le Sage's conception did not at first arouse any very great amount of interest. It was put forward about a century ago, but for two or three generations remained practically unnoticed. The philosophers of the first half of our century seem to have despaired of explaining gravitation, though Faraday long experimented in the hope of establis.h.i.+ng a relation between gravitation and electricity or magnetism. But not long after the middle of the century, when a new science of dynamics was claiming paramount importance, and physicists were striving to express all tangible phenomena intenus of matter in motion, the theory of Le Sage was revived and given a large measure of attention. It seemed to have at least the merit of explaining the facts without conflicting with any known mechanical law, which was more than could be said of any other guess at the question that had ever been made.

More recently, however, another explanation has been found which also meets this condition. It is a conception based, like most other physical speculations of the last generation, upon the hypothesis of the vortex atom, and was suggested, no doubt, by those speculations which consider electricity and magnetism to be conditions of strain or twist in the substance of the universal ether. In a word, it supposes that gravitation also is a form of strain in this ether--a strain that may be likened to a suction which the vortex atom is supposed to exert on the ether in which it lies. According to this view, gravitation is not a push from without, but a pull from within; not due to exterior influences, but an inherent and indissoluble property of matter itself.

The conception has the further merit of correlating gravitation with electricity, magnetism, and light, as a condition of that strange ethereal ocean of which modern physics takes so much account. But here, again, clearly, we are but heaping hypothesis upon hypothesis, as before. Still, an hypothesis that violates no known law and has the warrant of philosophical probability is always worthy of a hearing. But we must not forget that it is hypothesis only, not conclusive theory.

The same caution applies, manifestly, to all the other speculations which have the vortex atom, so to say, for their foundation-stone. Thus Professors Stewart and Tait's inferences as to the destructibility of matter, based on the supposition that the ether is not quite frictionless; Professor Dolbear's suggestions as to the creation of matter through the development of new ether ripples, and the same thinker's speculations as to an upper limit of temperature, based on the mechanical conception of a limit to the possible vibrations of a vortex ring, not to mention other more or less fascinating speculations based on the vortex hypothesis, must be regarded, whatever their intrinsic interest, as insecurely grounded, until such time as new experimental methods shall give them another footing. Lord Kelvin himself holds all such speculations utterly in abeyance. "The vortex theory," he says, "is only a dream. Itself unproven, it can prove nothing, and any speculations founded upon it are mere dreams about a dream."*1*

That certainly must be considered an unduly modest p.r.o.nouncement regarding the only workable hypothesis of the const.i.tution of matter that has ever been imagined; yet the fact certainly holds that the vortex theory, the great contribution of the nineteenth century towards the solution of a world-old problem, has not been carried beyond the stage of hypothesis, and must be pa.s.sed on, with its burden of interesting corollaries, to another generation for the experimental evidence that will lead to its acceptance or its refutation. Our century has given experimental proof of the existence of the atom, but has not been able to fathom in the same way the exact form or nature of this ultimate particle of matter.

Equally in the dark are we as to the explanation of that strange affinity for its neighbors which every atom manifests in some degree.

If we a.s.sume that the power which holds one atom to another is the same which in the case of larger bodies we term gravitation, that answer carries us but a little way, since, as we have seen, gravitation itself is the greatest of mysteries. But again, how chances it that different atoms attract one another in such varying degrees, so that, for example, fluorine unites with everything it touches, argon with nothing? And how is it that different kinds of atoms can hold to themselves such varying numbers of fellow-atoms--oxygen one, hydrogen two, and so on? These are questions for the future. The wisest chemist does not know why the simplest chemical experiment results as it does. Take, for example, a water-like solution of nitrate of silver, and let fall into it a few drops of another water-like solution of hydrochloric acid; a white insoluble precipitate of chloride of silver is formed. Any tyro in chemistry could have predicted the result with absolute certainty. But the prediction would have been based purely upon previous empirical knowledge--solely upon the fact that the thing had been done before over and over, always with the same result. Why the silver forsook the nitrogen atom and grappled the atom of oxygen no one knows. Nor can any one as yet explain just why it is that the new compound is an insoluble, colored, opaque substance, whereas the antecedent ones were soluble, colorless, and transparent. More than that, no one can explain with certainty just what is meant by the familiar word soluble itself. That is to say, no one knows just what happens when one drops a lump of salt or sugar into a bowl of water. We may believe with Professor Ostwald and his followers that the molecules of sugar merely glide everywhere between the molecules of water, without chemical action; or, on the other hand, dismissing this mechanical explanation, we may say with Mendeleef that the process of solution is the most active of chemical phenomena, involving that incessant interplay of atoms known as dissociation. But these two explanations are mutually exclusive, and n.o.body can say positively which one, if either, is right. Nor is either theory at best more than a half explanation, for the why of the strange mechanical or chemical activities postulated is quite ignored. How is it, for example, that the molecules of water are able to loosen the intermolecular bonds of the sugar particles, enabling them to scamper apart?

But, for that matter, what is the nature of these intermolecular bonds in any case? And why, at the same temperature, are some substances held together with such enormous rigidity, others so loosely? Why does not a lump of iron dissolve as readily as the lump of sugar in our bowl of water? Guesses may be made to-day at these riddles, to be sure, but anything like tenable solutions will only be possible when we know much more than at present of the nature of intermolecular forces and of the mechanism of molecular structures. As to this last, studies are under way that are full of promise. For the past ten or fifteen years Professor Van 't Hoof of Amsterdam (now of Berlin), with a company of followers, has made the s.p.a.ce relations of atoms a special study, with the result that so-called stereo-chemistry has attained a firm position.

A truly amazing insight has been gained into the s.p.a.ce relations of the molecules of carbon compounds in particular, and other compounds are under investigation. But these results, wonderful though they seem when the intricacy of the subject is considered, are, after all, only tentative. It is demonstrated that some molecules have their atoms arranged in perfectly definite and unalterable schemes, but just how these systems are to be mechanically pictured--whether as miniature planetary systems or what not--remains for the investigators of the future to determine.

It appears, then, that whichever way one turns in the realm of the atom and molecule, one finds it a land of mysteries. In no field of science have more startling discoveries been made in the past century than here; yet nowhere else do there seem to lie wider realms yet unfathomed.

LIFE PROBLEMS

In the life history of at least one of the myriad star systems there has come a time when, on the surface of one of the minor members of the group, atoms of matter have been aggregated into such a.s.sociations as to const.i.tute what is called living matter. A question that at once suggests itself to any one who conceives even vaguely the relative uniformity of conditions in the different star groups is as to whether other worlds than ours have also their complement of living forms.

The question has interested speculative science more perhaps in our generation than ever before, but it can hardly be said that much progress has been made towards a definite answer. At first blush the demonstration that all the worlds known to us are composed of the same matter, subject to the same general laws, and probably pa.s.sing through kindred stages of evolution and decay, would seem to carry with it the reasonable presumption that to all primary planets, such as ours, a similar life-bearing stage must come. But a moment's reflection shows that scientific probabilities do not carry one safely so far as this. Living matter, as we know it, notwithstanding its capacity for variation, is conditioned within very narrow limits as to physical surroundings. Now it is easily to be conceived that these peculiar conditions have never been duplicated on any other of all the myriad worlds. If not, then those more complex aggregations of atoms which we must suppose to have been built up in some degree on all cooling globes must be of a character so different from what we term living matter that we should not recognize them as such. Some of them may be infinitely more complex, more diversified in their capacities, more widely responsive to the influences about them, than any living thing on earth, and yet not respond at all to the conditions which we apply as tests of the existence of life.

This is but another way of saying that the peculiar limitations of specialized aggregations of matter which characterize what we term living matter may be mere incidental details of the evolution of our particular star group, our particular planet even--having some such relative magnitude in the cosmic order, as, for example, the exact detail of outline of some particular leaf of a tree bears to the entire subject of vegetable life. But, on the other hand, it is also conceivable that the conditions on all planets comparable in position to ours, though never absolutely identical, yet pa.s.s at some stage through so similar an epoch that on each and every one of them there is developed something measurably comparable, in human terms, to what we here know as living matter; differing widely, perhaps, from any particular form of living being here, yet still conforming broadly to a definition of living things. In that case the life-bearing stage of a planet must be considered as having far more general significance; perhaps even as const.i.tuting the time of fruitage of the cosmic organism, though nothing but human egotism gives warrant to this particular presumption.

Between these two opposing views every one is free to choose according to his preconceptions, for as yet science is unable to give a deciding vote. Equally open to discussion is that other question, as to whether the evolution of universal atoms into a "vital" a.s.sociation ma.s.s from which all the diversified forms evolved, or whether such s.h.i.+fting from the so-called non-vital to the vital was many times repeated--perhaps still goes on incessantly. It is quite true that the testimony of our century, so far as it goes, is all against the idea of "spontaneous generation" under existing conditions. It has been clearly enough demonstrated that the bacteria and other low forms of familiar life which formerly were supposed to originate "spontaneously" had a quite different origin. But the solution of this special case leaves the general problem still far from solved. Who knows what are the conditions necessary to the evolution of the ever-present atoms into "vital"

a.s.sociations? Perhaps extreme pressure may be one of these conditions; and, for aught any man knows to the contrary, the "spontaneous generation" of living protoplasms may be taking place incessantly at the bottom of every ocean of the globe.

This of course is a mere bald statement of possibilities. It may be met by another statement of possibilities, to the effect that perhaps the conditions necessary to the evolution of living matter here may have been fulfilled but once, since which time the entire current of life on our globe has been a diversified stream from that one source. Observe, please, that this a.s.sumption does not fall within that category which I mention above as contraband of science in speaking of the origin of worlds. The existence of life on our globe is only an incident limited to a relatively insignificant period of time, and whether the exact conditions necessary to its evolution pertained but one second or a hundred million years does not in the least matter in a philosophical a.n.a.lysis. It is merely a question of fact, just as the particular temperature of the earth's surface at any given epoch is a question of fact, the one condition, like the other, being temporary and incidental.

But, as I have said, the question of fact as to the exact time of origin of life on our globe is a question that science as yet cannot answer.

But, in any event, what is vastly more important than this question as to the duration of time in which living matter was evolved is a comprehension of the philosophical status of this evolution from the "non-vital" to the "vital." If one a.s.sumes that this evolution was brought about by an interruption of the play of forces. .h.i.therto working in the universe--that the correlation of forces involved was unique, acting then and then only--by that a.s.sumption he removes the question of the origin of life utterly from the domain of science--exactly as the a.s.sumption of an initial push would remove the question of the origin of worlds from the domain of science. But the science of to-day most emphatically demurs to any such a.s.sumption. Every scientist with a wide grasp of facts, who can think clearly and without prejudice over the field of what is known of cosmic evolution, must be driven to believe that the alleged wide gap between vital and non-vital matter is largely a figment of prejudiced human understanding. In the broader view there seem no gaps in the scheme of cosmic evolution--no break in the incessant reciprocity of atomic actions, whether those atoms be floating as a "fire mist" out in one part of s.p.a.ce, or aggregated into the brain of a man in another part. And it seems well within the range of scientific expectation that the laboratory worker of the future will learn how so to duplicate telluric conditions that the universal forces will build living matter out of the inorganic in the laboratory, as they have done, and perhaps still are doing, in the terrestrial oceans.

To the timid reasoner that a.s.sumption of possibilities may seem startling. But a.s.suredly it is no more so than seemed, a century ago, the a.s.sumption that man has evolved, through the agency of "natural laws" only, from the lowest organism. Yet the timidity of that elder day has been obliged by the progress of the past century to adapt its conceptions to that a.s.sured sequence of events. And some day, in all probability, the timidity of to-day will be obliged to take that final logical step which to-day's knowledge foreshadows as a future if not a present necessity.

THE MECHANISM OF THE CELL

Whatever future science may be able to accomplish in this direction, however, it must be admitted that present science finds its hands quite full, without going farther afield than to observe the succession of generations among existing forms of life. Since the establishment of the doctrine of organic evolution, questions of heredity, always sufficiently interesting, have been at the very focus of attention of the biological world. These questions, under modern treatment, have resolved themselves, since the mechanism of such transmission has been proximately understood, into problems of cellular activity. And much as has been learned about the cell of late, that interesting microcosm still offers a mult.i.tude of intricacies for solution.

Thus, at the very threshold, some of the most elementary principles of mechanical construction of the cell are still matters of controversy. On the one hand, it is held by Professor O. Butschli and his followers that the substance of the typical cell is essentially alveolar, or foamlike, comparable to an emulsion, and that the observed reticular structure of the cell is due to the intersections of the walls of the minute ultimate globules. But another equally authoritative school of workers holds to the view, first expressed by Frommann and Arnold, that the reticulum is really a system of threads, which const.i.tute the most important basis of the cell structure. It is even held that these fibres penetrate the cell walls and connect adjoining cells, so that the entire body is a reticulum. For the moment there is no final decision between these opposing views. Professor Wilson of Columbia has suggested that both may contain a measure of truth.

Again, it is a question whether the finer granules seen within the cell are or are not typical structures, "capable of a.s.similation, growth, and division, and hence to be regarded as elementary units of structure standing between the cell and the ultimate molecules of living matter."

The more philosophical thinkers, like Spencer, Darwin, Haeckel, Michael Foster, August Weismann, and many others, believe that such "intermediate units must exist, whether or not the microscope reveals them to view." Weismann, who has most fully elaborated a hypothetical scheme of the relations of the intracellular units, identifies the larger of these units not with the ordinary granules of the cell, but with a remarkable structure called chromatin, which becomes aggregated within the cell nucleus at the time of cellular division--a structure which divides into definite parts and goes through some most suggestive manoeuvres in the process of cell multiplication. All these are puzzling structures; and there is another minute body within the cell, called the centro-some, that is quite as much so. This structure, discovered by Van Beneden, has been regarded as essential to cell division, yet some recent botanical studies seem to show that sometimes it is altogether wanting in a dividing cell.

In a word, the architecture of the cell has been shown by modern researches to be wonderfully complicated, but the acc.u.mulating researches are just at a point where much is obscure about many of the observed phenomena. The immediate future seems full of promise of advances upon present understanding of cell processes. But for the moment it remains for us, as for preceding generations, about the most incomprehensible, scientifically speaking, of observed phenomena, that a single microscopic egg cell should contain within its substance all the potentialities of a highly differentiated adult being. The fact that it does contain such potentialities is the most familiar of every-day biological observations, but not even a proximal explanation of the fact is as yet attainable.

THE ANCESTRY OF THE MAMMALS

Turning from the cell as an individual to the mature organism which the cell composes when aggregated with its fellows, one finds the usual complement of open questions, of greater or less significance, focalizing the attention of working biologists. Thus the evolutionist, secure as is his general position, is yet in doubt when it comes to tracing the exact lineage of various forms. He does not know, for example, exactly which order of invertebrates contains the type from which vertebrates sprang, though several hotly contested opinions, each exclusive of the rest, are in the field. Again, there is like uncertainty and difference of opinion as to just which order of lower vertebrates formed the direct ancestry of the mammals. Among the mammals themselves there are several orders, such as the whales, the elephants, and even man himself, whose exact lines of more immediate ancestry are not as fully revealed by present paleontology as is to be desired.

THE NEW SCIENCE OF ANTHROPOLOGY

All these, however, are details that hardly take rank with the general problems that we are noticing. There are other questions, however, concerning the history and present evolution of man himself that are of wider scope, or at least seemingly greater importance from a human stand-point, which within recent decades have come for the first time within the scope of truly inductive science. These are the problems of anthropology--a science of such wide scope, such far-reaching collateral implications, that as yet its specific field and functions are not as clearly defined or as generally recognized as they are probably destined to be in the near future. The province of this new science is to correlate the discoveries of a wide range of collateral sciences--paleontology, biology, medicine, and so on--from the point of view of human history and human welfare. To this end all observable races of men are studied as to their physical characteristics, their mental and moral traits, their manners, customs, languages, and religions. A ma.s.s of data is already at hand, and in process of sorting and correlating. Out of this effort will probably come all manner of useful generalizations, perhaps in time bringing sociology, or the study of human social relations, to the rank of a veritable science. But great as is the promise of anthropology, it can hardly be denied that the broader questions with which it has to deal--questions of race, of government, of social evolution--are still this side the fixed plane of a.s.sured generalization. No small part of its interest and importance depends upon the fact that the great problems that engage it are as yet unsolved problems. In a word, anthropology is perhaps the most important science in the entire hierarchy to-day, precisely because it is an immature science. Its position to-day is perhaps not unlike that of paleontology at the close of the eighteenth century. May its promise find as full fruition!

IX. RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT

THE SCIENTIFIC ATt.i.tUDE OF MIND

ANY one who has not had a rigid training in science may advantageously reflect at some length upon the meaning of true scientific induction.

Various ill.u.s.trations in our text are meant to convey the idea that logical thinking consists simply in drawing correct conclusions as to the probable sequence of events in nature. It will soon be evident to any one who carefully considers the subject that we know very little indeed about cause and effect in a rigid acceptance of these words. We observe that certain phenomena always follow certain other phenomena, and these observations fix the idea in our mind that such phenomena bear to one another the relation of effect and cause. The conclusion is a perfectly valid one so long as we remember that in the last a.n.a.lysis the words "cause" and "effect" have scarcely greater force than the terms "invariable antecedent" and "invariable consequent"--that is to say, they express an observed sequence which our experience has never contradicted.

Now the whole structure of science would be hopelessly undermined had not scientific men come to have the fullest confidence in the invariability of certain of these sequences of events. Let us, for example, take the familiar and fundamental observation that any unsupported object, having what we term weight, invariably falls directly towards the centre of the earth. We express this fact in terms of a so-called law of gravitation, and every one, consciously or unconsciously, gives full deference to this law. So firmly convinced are we that the gravitation pull is a cause that works with absolute, unvarying uniformity that we should regard it as a miracle were any heavy body to disregard the law of gravitation and rise into the air when not impelled by some other force of which we have knowledge. Thanks to Newton, we know that this force of gravitation is not at all confined to the earth, but affects the whole universe, so that every two bits of matter, regardless of location, pull at each other with a force proportionate to their ma.s.s and inversely as the square of their distance.

Were this so-called law of gravitation to cease to operate, the entire plan of our universe would be sadly disarranged. The earth, for example, and the other planets would leave their elliptical orbits and hurtle away on a tangential course. We should soon be beyond the reach of the sun's beneficent influence; an arctic chill would pervade polar and tropical regions alike, and the term of man's existence would come suddenly to a close. Here, then, is a force at once the most comprehensible and most important from a human stand-point that can be conceived; yet it cannot be too often repeated, we know nothing whatever as to the nature of this force. We do not know that there may not be other starlike cl.u.s.ters beyond our universe where this force does not prevail. We do not know that there may not come a period when this force will cease to operate in our universe, and when, for example, it will be superseded by the universal domination of a force of mutual repulsion.

For aught we know to the contrary, our universe may be a pulsing organism, or portion of an organism, all the particles of which are at one moment pulled together and the next moment hurled apart--the moments of this computation being, of course, myriads of years as we human pygmies compute time.

To us it would be a miracle if a heavy body, unsupported, should fly off into s.p.a.ce instead of dropping towards the centre of the earth; yet the time may come when all such heavy objects will thus fly off into s.p.a.ce, and when the observer, could there be such, must marvel at the miracle of seeing a heavy object fall towards the earth. Such thoughts as these should command the attention of every student of science who would really understand the meaning of what are termed natural laws. But, on the other hand, such suggestions must be held carefully in check by the observation that scientific imagining as to what may come to pa.s.s at some remote future time must in no wise influence our practical faith in the universality of certain natural laws in the present epoch. We may imagine a time when terrestrial gravitation no longer exerts its power, but we dare not challenge that power in the present. There could be no science did we not accept certain constantly observed phenomena as the effect of certain causes. The whole body of science is made up solely of such observations and inferences. Natural science is so called because it has to do with observed phenomena of nature.

NATURAL VERSUS SUPERNATURAL

A further word must be said as to this word "natural," and its complementary word "supernatural." I have said in an early chapter that prehistoric man came, through a use of false inductions, to the belief in supernatural powers. Let us examine this statement in some detail, for it will throw much light on our later studies. The thing to get clearly in mind is the idea that when we say "natural" phenomena we mean merely phenomena that have been observed to occur. From a truly scientific stand-point there is no preconception as to what manner of phenomenon may, or may not, occur. All manner of things do occur constantly that would seem improbable were they not matters of familiar knowledge. The simplest facts in regard to gravitation involve difficulties that were stumbling-blocks to many generations of thinkers, and which continue stumbling-blocks to the minds of each generation of present-day children.

Thus most of us can recall a time when we first learned with astonishment that the earth is "round like a ball"; that there are people walking about on the other side of the world with their feet towards ours, and that the world itself is rus.h.i.+ng through s.p.a.ce and spinning rapidly about as it goes. Then we learn, further, that numberless familiar phenomena would be quite different could we be transported to other globes. That, for example, a man who can spring two or three feet into the air here would be able, with the same muscular exertion, to vault almost to the house-tops if he lived on a small planet like the moon; but, on the other hand, would be held p.r.o.ne by his own weight if transported to a great planet like Jupiter.

When, further, we reflect that with all our capacity to measure and estimate this strange force of gravitation we, after all, know absolutely nothing as to its real nature; that we cannot even imagine how one portion of matter can act on another across an infinite abysm (or, for that matter, across the smallest s.p.a.ce), we see at once that our most elementary scientific studies bring us into the presence of inscrutable mysteries. In whatever direction we turn this view is but emphasized. Electricity, magnetism, the hypothetical ether, the inscrutable forces manifested everywhere in the biological field--all these are, as regard their ultimate nature, altogether mysterious.

In a word, the student of nature is dealing everywhere with the wonderful, the incomprehensible. Yet all the manifestations that he observes are found to repeat themselves in certain unvarying sequences.

Certain applications of energy will produce certain movements of matter.

We may not know the nature of the so-called cause, but we learn to measure the result, and in other allied cases we learn to reason back or infer the cause from observation of results. The latter indeed is the essence of scientific inquiry. When certain series of phenomena have been cla.s.sified together as obviously occurring under the domination of the same or similar causes, we speak of having determined a law of nature. For example, the fact that any body in motion tends to go on at the same rate of speed in a direct line forever, expresses such a law.

The fact that the gravitation pull is directly as the ma.s.s and inversely as the square of the distance of the bodies it involves, expresses another such law. The fact that the planetary bodies of the solar system revolve in elliptical orbits under the joint influence of the two laws just named, expresses yet another law. In a word, then, these so-called "laws" are nothing more than convenient formulae to express the cla.s.sification of observed facts.

INDUCTIVE VERSUS DEDUCTIVE REASONING

The ancient thinkers indulged constantly in what we now speak of as deductive reasoning. They gave heed to what we term metaphysical preconceptions as to laws governing natural phenomena. The Greeks, for example, conceived that the circle is the perfect body, and that the universe is perfect; therefore, sun and moon must be perfect spheres or disks, and all the orbits of the heavenly bodies must be exactly circular. We have seen that this metaphysical conception, dominating the world for many centuries, exerted a constantly hampering influence upon the progress of science. There were numerous other instances of the same r.e.t.a.r.ding influence of deductive reasoning. Modern science tries to cast aside all such preconceptions. It does not always quite succeed, but it makes a strenuous effort to draw conclusions logically from observed phenomena instead of trying to force observations into harmony with a preconeived idea. Herein lies the essential difference between the primitive method and the perfected modern method. Neither the one nor the other is intended to transcend the bounds of the natural. That is to say, both are concerned with the sequence of actual events, with the observation of actual phenomena; but the modern observer has the almost infinite advantage of being able to draw upon an immense store of careful and accurate observations. A knowledge of the mistakes of his predecessors has taught him the value of caution in interpreting phenomena that seem to fall outside the range of such laws of nature as experience has seemed to demonstrate. Again and again the old metaphysical laws have been forced aside by observation; as, for example, when Kepler showed that the planetary orbits are not circular, and Galileo's telescope proved that the spot-bearing sun cannot be a perfect body in the old Aristotelian sense.

New means of observation have from time to time opened up new fields, yet with all the extensions of our knowledge we come, paradoxically enough, to realize but the more fully the limitations of that knowledge.

We seem scarcely nearer to-day to a true understanding of the real nature of the "forces" whose operation we see manifested about us than were our most primitive ancestors. But in one great essential we have surely progressed. We have learned that the one true school is the school of experience; that metaphysical causes are of absolutely no consequence unless they can gain support through tangible observations.

Even so late as the beginning of the nineteenth century, the great thinker, Hegel, retaining essentially the Greek cast of thought, could make the metaphysical declaration that, since seven planets were known, and since seven is the perfect number, it would be futile to search for other planets. But even as he made this declaration another planet was found. It would be safe to say that no thinker of the present day would challenge defeat in quite the Aristotelian or Hegelian manner; but, on the other hand, it is equally little open to doubt that, in matters slightly less susceptible of tangible demonstration, metaphysical conceptions still hold sway; and as regards the average minds of our time, it is perhaps not an unfair estimate to say they surely have not advanced a jot beyond the Aristotelian stand-point. Untrained through actual experience in any field of inductive science, they remain easy victims of metaphysical reasoning. Indeed, since the conditions of civilization throw a protecting influence about us, and make the civilized man less amenable to results of illogical action than was the barbarian, it may almost be questioned whether the average person of to-day is the equal, as a scientific reasoner, of the average man of the Stone Age.

A few of the more tangible superst.i.tions of primitive man have been banished from even the popular mind by the clear demonstration of science, but a host remains. I venture to question whether, if the test could be made in the case of ten thousand average persons throughout Christendom, it would not be found that a majority of these persons entertain more utterly mistaken metaphysical ideas regarding natural phenomena than they do truly scientific conceptions. We pride ourselves on the enlightenment of our age, but our pride is largely based on an illusion. Mankind at large is still in the dark age. The historian of the remote future will see no radical distinction between the superst.i.tions of the thirteenth century and the superst.i.tions of the nineteenth century. But he will probably admit that a greater change took place in the world of thought between the year 1859 and the close of the nineteenth century than had occurred in the lapse of two thousand years before If this estimate be correct, it is indeed a privilege to be living in this generation, for we are on the eve of great things, and beyond question the revolution that is going on about us denotes the triumph of science and its inductive method. Just in proportion as we get away from the old metaphysical preconceptions, subst.i.tuting for them the new inductive method, just in that proportion do we progress. The essence of the new method is to have no preconceptions as to the bounds of nature; to regard no phenomenon, no sequence of phenomena, as impossible; but, on the other hand, to accept no alleged law, no theory, no hypothesis, that has not the warrant of observed phenomena in its favor.