1 82 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



met with an old fact among the countless tons of them under which 

 our library shelves groan which I am certain would not betray to the 

 eager experimentalist of whom we are so proud many a crack and many 

 a blemish. To the observant dilettante or to the ingenuous, earnest 

 student — if one can be called such who flits often across the whole 

 domain in which truth is sought, it is apparent that different tests are 

 applied to the genuineness of the information acquired. 



The physicist concludes he has something material because when his 

 electrons are fired through a tube he can see the flash or hear them ring 

 a bell and so count them. The physiologist or the biochemist concludes 

 a certain organic juice is present because he can perceive the effects of 

 its diastase or the serologist can see the clouding or clearing of the 

 fluid in his test tube. The geologist draws certain conclusions from 

 the scar on the hillside or river bank, the archeologist from the pres- 

 ence or absence of certain forms of the architrave or of certain metals 

 in the implements he finds. Such evidence for the establishment of 

 facts as is satisfactory to the sociologist or psychologist or archeologist 

 is scorned by the astronomer and the physicist, while the statistician is 

 still more intolerant. " Chacun a son metier " with a shrug of the 

 shoulder is the answer given to extraneous criticism by the delver in 

 each domain for hidden facts, yet in a certain tacit way it is felt that the 

 physicist in the making of a flash or in the ringing of a bell, and the 

 statistician in counting them, has really the better grasp on reality, 

 until along comes some king of physicists like Lodge or Crookes or some 

 skilful fencer like Bergson, some iconoclast like Driesch, and shows that 

 these things are not physical at all, but are knots in the ether or meta- 

 physical entirely, or the Lord knows what, and the dilettante says (to 

 himself, if prudent) : "Well, what is the test of Eeality anyhow, what 

 is a fact ? It seems to depend on the method " ; and he goes his way with 

 his own private opinion of the claim that the methods of science are 

 something sacrosanct and apart from other demonstrations of the 

 grounds of belief. 



Truth is eternal, of course, but whether there are some truths which 

 are not facts or some facts which are not truths may be left to the 

 logicians, and other former inhabitants of the fanes of science, discredited 

 dwellers in the temples of truth. The mantle of the sophist, the glamor 

 of the logician clothes other forms and illuminates the halls of other 

 shrines. Other prophets are now accustomed to have their dictum 

 greeted as if: "A fonte relatum Hammonis." The same befitting 

 solemnity, the same sepulchral dignity, again clothes the dispenser of new 

 truths as of old shone around the prophets with the oriflamrae of truth. 

 The modern prophet, however, draws his inspiration not from the gush- 

 ing fountains of the imagination set playing by some Pagan or Christian 

 divinity, but from the solid foundation of facts laid down by the un- 



