306 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sonist: Well, maybe your mind is not in time, and so you made all the 

 things behave the same way at all times. Mind, I don't say it is so; but 

 it may be. Sailor: Is that all you know about it? Why not say the 

 stones are made to move as they do by something like my mind? 



When the disciple gets home, he consults Dr. Pearson. "Why," says 

 Dr. Pearson, "you must not deny that the facts are really concatenated; 

 only there is no rationality about that." "Dear me," says the disciple, 

 "then there really is a concatenation that makes all the component ac- 

 celerations of all the bodies scattered through space conform to the 

 formula that Newton, or Lami, or Varignon invented?" "Well, the 

 formula is the device of one of those men, and it conforms to the facts." 

 "To the facts its inventor knew, and also to those he only predicted?" 

 "As for prediction, it is unscientific business." "Still the prediction and 

 the facts predicted agree." "Yes." "Then," says the disciple, "it ap- 

 pears to me that there really is in nature something extremely like 

 action in conformity with a highly general intellectual principle." "Per- 

 haps so," I suppose Dr. Pearson would say, "but nothing in the least like 

 rationality." "Oh," says the disciple, "I thought rationality was con- 

 formity to a widely general principle." 



