PEARSON'S GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE. 305 



detecting any unreality, that is, lack of insistency, in a notion. First, 

 many ideas yield at once to a direct effort of the will. We call them 

 fancies. Secondly, we can call in other witnesses, including ourselves 

 under new conditions. Sometimes dialectic disputation will dispel an 

 error. At any rate, it may be voted down so overwhelmingly as to con- 

 vince even the person whom it affects. Thirdly, the last resort is predic- 

 tion and experimentation. Note that these two are equally essential parts 

 of this method, which Professor Pearson keeps — I had almost said sedu- 

 lously — out of sight in his discussion of the rationality of nature. He 

 only alludes to it when he comes to his transcendental 'pure suggestion.' 

 Nothing is more notorious than that this method of prediction and ex- 

 perimentation has proved the master-key to science; and yet, in Chapter 

 IV., Professor Pearson tries to persuade us that prediction is no part of 

 science, which must only describe sense-impressions. [A sense-impres- 

 sion cannot be described.] He does not say that he would permit gener- 

 alization of the facts. He ought not to do so, since generalization inevi- 

 tably involves prediction. 



The third leg of the argumentation is that human beings are so 

 much alike that what one man perceives and infers another man will 

 be likely to perceive and infer. This is a recognized weakness of the 

 second of the above methods. It is by no means sufficient to destroy 

 that method, but along with other defects it does render resort to the 

 third method imperative. When I see Dr. Pearson passing over without 

 notice the first and third of the only three possible ways of distinguish- 

 ing whether the rationality of nature is real or not, and giving a lame 

 excuse for reversing the verdict of the second, so that his decision seems 

 to spring from antecedent predilection, I cannot recommend his pro- 

 cedure as affording such an exemplar of the logic of science as one 

 might expect to find in a grammar of science. 



An ignorant sailor on a desert island lights in some way upon the 

 idea of the parallelogram of forces, and sets to work making experi- 

 ments to see whether the actions of bodies conform to that formula. 

 He finds that they do so, as nearly as he can observe, in many trials in- 

 variably. He wonders why inanimate things should thus conform to a 

 widely general intellectual formula. Just then, a disciple of Professor 

 Pearson lands on the island and the sailor asks him what he thinks 

 about it. "It is very simple," says the disciple, "you see you made the 

 formula and then you projected it into the phenomena." Sailor: What 

 are the phenomena? Pearsonist: The motions of the stones you experi- 

 mented with. Sailor: But I could not tell until afterward whether the 

 stones had acted according to the rule or not. Pearsonist: That makes 

 no difference. You made the rule by looking at some stones, and all 

 stones are alike. Sailor: But those I used were very unlike, and I want 

 to know what made them all move exactly according to one rule. Pear- 



VOL. LVIII.— 20. 



