THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 755 



tests will select for us foods among poisons. We may trust tliese 

 tests absolutely. We may safely and sometimes wisely take 

 poisons into our bodies if we know what we are doing. By the 

 advice of a physician, trusting in the weigher's instruments of 

 precision, poisons may do no harm. One grain of strychnine 

 may be an aid to vital processes ; a dozen may mean instant ces- 

 sation of these processes. The balance advises us as to all this. 

 All these instruments of precision belong to science. These are 

 examples taken from thousands of the methods of organized com- 

 mon sense. By means of common sense, organized and unorgan- 

 ized, all creatures that can move are enabled to move safely. The 

 security of human life in its relations to environment is a suffi- 

 cient answer to the "philosophic doubt" of Berkeley and Balfour 

 as to the existence of external Nature ; for if all phenomena were 

 within the mind, no one of them could be more dangerous than 

 another. A dream of murder is no more dangerous than a dream 

 of an afternoon pink tea, so long as its action is confined to the 

 limits of the dream; but the relation of life to environment is 

 inseparable and inexorable. Cause and effect are perfectly 

 linked. This is a world of absolute verity, and its demand is 

 absolute obedience. Life without concessions of conditions is the 

 philosopher's dream. 



What we know as pain is the necessary signal of warning of 

 bad results, of bad relations. Without pain life conditioned by 

 environment would be impossible. We need such stimulus to 

 veracity. Those dangers which are painless are the hardest 

 to avoid ; the diseases which are painless are the most difficult to 

 cure. Misery in general is only Nature's protest against personal 

 degradation. The way out of misery is the way into life. 



In this relation must science recognize the value of ideals ? 

 The ideal in the mind tends always to go over into, action. The 

 noble ideal discloses itself in a noble life. It is part of the wisdom 

 of each generation, its science as well as its religion, to form the 

 ideals of the rest. History is written in these ideals before it is 

 come to the stage of life. An ideal is not a dream ; a dream is 

 fleeting. An ideal has the urill behind it. The persistence of a 

 lofty ideal is the central axis of the life worth living. 



An old parable of the conduct of life shows man in a light 

 skiff in a tortuous channel beset with rocks, borne by a falling 

 current to an unknown sea. He is kept awake by the needs of 

 his situation. As his boat bumps against the rocks he must bestir 

 himself. If this contact were not painful he would not heed it. 

 If it were not hurtful he would not need to heed it. Had he no 

 power to act, he could not heed it if he would. But with sensa- 

 tion, will, freedom to act, narrow though the limits of freedom be, 

 his safety rests in some degree in his own hands. That he has 



