i 5 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



walls, the heroes within it, with their wives and children, as well as 

 the Greek warriors and their ships, without it everything, including 

 the Trojan horse and what it contained from a parcel of solar myths, 

 demonstrating to their own satisfaction that all these persons and 

 things were, at bottom, nothing more than "objectivations" of forms 

 and laws of speech. As was to be expected, this fine theory came to 

 grief when Schliemann appeared with a pickaxe and spade. As usual, 

 the theory collapsed in the presence of the facts. Be that as it may, 

 there is one thing these scientific pretenders persist in asserting, in 

 spite of all their past discomfitures : that more than three fourths of 

 the controversies in theology and metaphysics have had their rise in 

 the ignorance of the fathers of the Church, and of mediaeval and 

 modern scholastics, of the results brought to light in these new-fangled 

 sciences. Unfortunately, when I was less old and waiy than I am 

 now, I fell in with these " paradoxers," some of whom I knew to be 

 men of great learning, and believed to be persons of thorough earnest- 

 ness of purpose. To my astonishment I found two mathematicians 

 among them Hermann Grassmann and Franz Woepcke. I had read 

 with some difficulty, but, as I thought, with reasonable grasp of his 

 meaning, the " Ausdehnungslehre " (since supplemented by a new 

 treatise under nearly the same title, and a number of articles in 

 Crelle's and Borchardt's " Journal ") of Grassmann ; and I had at- 

 tempted to read some of the writings of Woej^cke, though without 

 success, because he went far beyond my depth. But I got an impres- 

 sion that both had things to say in mathematics, at least that were 

 worth knowing ; and inferred that there must be sense and jmrpose 

 also in their linguistic endeavors. In this way I became interested, 

 and gradually caught the spirit of the comparative linguists and my- 

 cologists by contagion. And so it came to pass that, after a while, I 

 asked myself this question : " If the results of these sciences are avail- 

 able for the solution of the perplexities of the metaphysicians, why 

 may they not also throw some light on the nature of our perplexities 

 in physics ? ' : So far as I could learn, no one had attempted an orderly 

 and systematic answer to this question, although (as is not unusual in 

 cases of this sort) there was a considerable amount of scattered mate- 

 rial ready to the hand of whomsoever should undertake the work. 

 Under these circumstances, I was fool-hardy enough to make an at- 

 tempt myself, the result being my poor little book. And now I con- 

 fess I am not a little mortified at being informed that I am a " learned 

 and able " idiot ; and I derive but scant comfort from the assurance 

 that my mental predicament may be accounted for on the theory of 

 contagion, and that the hypothesis of congenital imbecility may be 

 avoided. 



But it is time to doff my Gerund ian robes and to cease apostro- 

 phizing the familiars, for I have things to say which ought to be said 

 in all earnestness and sobriety. I am about to examine Professor 



