MIND AS A MEASURE OF NATURE. 685 



with a spirit of scientific research could be counted on one's fingers. 

 It is a striking fact in the history of man that, out of the many centu- 

 ries he has inhabited the earth, so few have been productive of any 

 useful knowledge. Throw away everything that had been done pre- 

 vious to the fifteenth century, and the loss would have been by no 

 means irreparable. Add to the productive period twenty centuries, 

 and we embrace the whole. Think of the average life of fourscore 

 men spanning the totality of human knowledge ! Truly, science is in 

 its infancy. What were the speculations of the men who existed a few 

 centuries prior to our era, we have no record. After the dim poetical 

 aspirations which compose the earliest known philosophy, there emerges 

 a pseudo-scientific natural philosophy, which, disdaining the shackles 

 that a constant reference to the phenomena of nature would impose 

 upon its flights, attempts at once to solve the problem of the universe. 

 Like the famous German, who, instead of going to see the camel he 

 was to describe, pursued the easier and more fascinating method of 

 evolving him from his own inner consciousness, the Greek philosopher 

 evolved the universe from his. 



A modern writer, who certainly can not be accused of want of 

 sympathy with a deductive philosophy, in comparing the relative 

 merits of the a j^rlori and a jjosterioi'i methods, observes that, although 

 the latter may in general come somewhat nearer the facts of nature, 

 yet, as it can never embrace all the phenomena in its inductions, it can 

 never arrive at the whole truth ; while the a priori method, if it 

 chance to hit upon the right formula, has the whole universe, so to 

 speak, at its fingers' ends. While we may readily admit the sublimity 

 of the attempt to reach out and grasp the hidden springs of nature, 

 stubborn facts constrain us to assert its impracticability. The diffuse 

 light of mental theory must be concentrated to a small focus in order 

 to produce any visible effect. 



Knowledge is the concomitant of the progressive limitation of our 

 powers. As long as man assumes that he contains within himself the 

 premises of knowledge, so long will it elude his grasp. Not until ex- 

 perience has compelled him to doubt the validity of his mental con- 

 cepts when applied to nature, and has forced him to have recourse to 

 facts only, has man taken the first steps in the paths of science. 



That one learns the boiindlessness of knowledge only in proportion 

 to his own acquirements is a saying famous only for its triteness. 

 What are certainties to the ignorant are uncertainties to the intelli- 

 gent. What are dogmas to the blind followers of a fanatical priest- 

 hood are for ever insoluble problems to the man of science. The igno- 

 rant savage who can not count beyond five; who has no abstract names 

 in his vocabulary; who knows nothing of the use of pronouns; who uses 

 words denoting the commonest things and most usual actions only 

 possesses knowledge differing so widely in degree from ours as almost 

 to constitute a difference of kind. For him nature has no problems. 



