LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY 335 



in his old age by his wish to find in nature some reason why tar 

 water must be a universal panacea, seems to have made this easy 

 reflection just as easily as the young idealist of the dialogues 

 with Hylas. May we not therefore ask whether one need be an 

 idealist to find evidence that nature is a language? May not 

 this evidence be just as clear to one who is no philosopher as if 

 he were an idealist, or a realist, or a nominalist, or a materialist, 

 or a monist, or an evolutionist, or a disciple of any other school 

 in the great college of scholastic philosophy ? 



"It is for me a sufficient reason not to believe the existence 

 of anything, if I see no reason for believing it," says Berkeley; 

 and a student of science who is "of a vulgar cast" and simple 

 enough to believe his own senses and leave things as he finds 

 them, may find as much reason as an idealist for refusing to 

 believe that nature is necessary ; nor need he be at all disturbed 

 if some should call him an agnostic. 



As I understand Berkeley, it is not because nature is orderly, 

 but because the order of nature is useful, and instructive, and 

 full of delights for living things, that he holds it to be a language. 

 Even if the Darwinian asks whether the order of nature may not 

 be mechanical, and explicable by physical science, I fail to see 

 why he should challenge Berkeley's belief that it is intended, 

 unless he doubts whether response to the order of nature is 

 useful and profitable and delightful. 



Does any man of science doubt whether the words "language 

 of nature" and "interpretation of nature" are used with clear, 

 intelligible meaning ? Is not the question whether nature is a 

 language which we learn to our delight and profit and instruction 

 quite a different matter from the question whether the language 

 of nature is necessary or unnecessary? 



May not one who does not know what the relation between 

 mind and matter is, one who is unable to find his way through 

 the perplexities which schoolmen and metaphysicians and theolo- 

 gians and other "philosophers" have thrown around the question 

 whether the language of nature is necessary or not, still find a 

 plain and easy answer to the simpler question whether nature is 

 a language by which we are entertained and instructed ? 



The student of science should be the last to doubt this possi- 



