1 84 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



as much by discusssion as by direct observation, but there seems to be a 

 smell of heresy about this. At least the phenomenon is familiar. The 

 cash-register method of Cuvier, whereby facts were supposed to be 

 recorded but not discussed, presents some flaws in its title of supremacy. 

 Possibly this is because there is really some incompleteness in applica- 

 tion. The interposition of the function of the cerebral cortex seems to 

 a certain extent unavoidable. In so far then we are, even with Cuvier's 

 classical conception, obliged to accept some modification. "Das Ding 

 an sich" is essentially a figment of the reasoning faculties of the 

 German mind, and the attempt to grasp it in the interest of pure sci- 

 ence has always been somewhat of a failure. 



In musing over these old notes then, I am led far astray in an 

 attempt to explain just why the old facts do not present that alluring 

 aspect to me which they once did. True in the words of the poet I may 

 well question : 



Are they still such as once they were? 



Or is the dreary change in me? 



Indubitably the " warped and broken board " of the poet's simile does 

 not take the painter's dye as it did when fresh sawed from the mill. 

 The chill of age we know brings the carping criticism to the front 

 which the blush of youth hides behind its inexperience, but I never 

 heard that wisdom was the latter's handmaiden rather than the servant 

 of the former. Nevertheless, it is well to compare the inspiration of the 

 recent revelation with that of the discovery of the old knowledge and the 

 force of the suggestions I have shadowed forth in my musings will not 

 appear entirely negligible. 



What then becomes of the old facts? Peripheral stimuli, trans- 

 mitted from without through the organs of special sense and inter- 

 preted by the cortical gray matter of the brain, have eventuated not only 

 in records carved on stone and scratched on brass, but they have left 

 their still more lasting impress on the social inheritance of countless 

 generations of men — evidently from far beyond the period when his- 

 torical records began to be preserved for us. The peripheral stimuli, 

 direct observation, with as little interposition of gray matter, illumi- 

 nated with as little of the heaven-bestowed light as possible, were the 

 origin of these beliefs — these facts — just as are the red rods we see by 

 the help of convex glasses which we now call tubercle bacilli. 



The archeologists tell us that time plays curious pranks with the 

 most resistant and stubborn materials. For many years the old story of 

 the Phoenician sailors' discovery of glass beneath their camp fire on 

 the sea sands of the shore was an attractive one, but evidently the manu- 

 facture of glass goes far back of the time when the Phoenicians were 

 masters of the sea. In some of the material dug out of the soil, once 

 pressed beneath the feet of men of the most remote antiquity, a streak 



