52 SCIENCE (and common sense) 



jects so selected— dissimilar perhaps as a sack of millet and a bar of 

 gold— ha\^e a remarkable relation. Interchanging their positions, we 

 find the system still in balance— an unprecedented de\'elopment. 

 More remarkable still, we find that in all situations of our lever sys- 

 tem anything balanced by the millet is alike balanced by the gold. 

 The equal-arm balance thus singles out that quality— characteristic 

 of millet as of gold— we agree to call "weight." We now adopt a cer- 

 tain object (e.g., a stone) as an arbitrary unit of "weight," just as we 

 took a spearshaft as our unit of length. Another object that balances 

 this stone on our equal-arm balance is then also of one-unit weight. 

 An object balanced by two one-unit objects is said to have two units 

 of weight, and so on. 



Grasping the concepts weight and distance, we can at last state 

 our problem in an abstract sketch of the system: 



Wi 



W2 



Placing various weights at various distances along the shaft, we now 

 expect soon to arrive at the law that governs the equilibrium of the 

 system, namely: 



ti;2 di 



This "discovery" of a "purely phenomenologic" relation is no drama 

 of man's intellectual powers, but a fantasy. Why? We assumed our- 

 sehes untutored savages. The law was first enunciated by no un- 

 tutored savage. Much is, then, hidden in the qualification "untu- 

 tored savages with a modern outlook." We began with the a\'owed 

 intention of discovering the law of the lever, which we already knew, 

 but not even an untutored savage with a modern outlook would 

 have such knowledge. At the very least we assumed awareness of a 

 problem and the desire to solve it, though this problem does not 

 force itself on us in an experience rich in oddments of many more 

 pressing ^'arieties. Even in formulating our problem we have assumed 



