THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 645 



pendence. In man we find the phenomena of animal life on a 

 larger and more differentiated scale, but the fact of self grows 

 faint as our study is continued. What is this vital force, and 

 what have we to do with it ; and is it, after all, more than another 

 name for the movement of molecules ? And of what are our cells 

 composed ? Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, we know by 

 name, but what are these in essence, and how are they different 

 one from another ? Does matter really exist ? Mathematicians 

 have claimed that all relations of ponderable matter and force 

 might exist if the atoms of matter were not realities, but simply 

 relations. Each of these atoms possessed of attraction or weight 

 may be a vortex ring or eddy in the ether, the ultimate units of 

 which have vibration but not attraction. If, therefore, the body 

 of man be an alliance of millions of animal cells, each cell formed 

 of millions of eddies in an inconceivable and impossible ether ; if 

 all things around us are recognized only by their effect on the 

 most unstable part of this unstable structure, then again " let us 

 think small beer of ourselves and pass around the bottle." 



Each fact or law must be expressed in terms of human experi- 

 ence, if it is expressed or made intelligible at all. To such terms, 

 the word reality applies, and beyond such reality we have never 

 gone. Apparently beyond it we can not go, at least in the only 

 life we have ever known. Balfour's plea for " philosophic doubt " 

 of the reality of the subject-matter of science is simply a rhetor- 

 ical trick of describing the known in terms of the unknown. By 

 the same process we may call a fishwife an " abracadabra " or an 

 " icosahedron," and by the same process we can build out of the 

 commonest materials "an occult science" or a new theosophy. 

 The measure of a man is the basis of human knowledge, and 

 whatever can not be brought to this measure is no part of knowl- 

 edge. In converse fashion Balfour speaks of the unknown in 

 terms of the known ; of the infinite in terms of human experi- 

 ence. This gives to his positive foundations of belief an appear- 

 ance of reality as fallacious as the unreality he assigns to the 

 foundations of science. This appearance of reality is the base cf 

 Haeckel's sneer at conventional religion as belief in a " gaseous 

 vertebrate." 



It is perfectly easy for science to distinguish between subjective 

 and objective nerve conditions. It can separate those produced by 

 subjective nervous derangements, or by conditions already passed, 

 from those which are contemporary impressions of external 

 things. It is perfectly easy for common sense to do the same. 

 To be able to do so is the essence of sanity. The test of sanity is 

 its livableness, for insanity is death. The borderland of spirit 

 of which we hear so often of late, the land in which subjective 

 and objective creations jostle each other, is the borderland of 



